Medieval Institute Publications

New Queer Medievalisms

A fourteenth-century carved ivory panel depicting two couples under a tree in a walled garden. — Panel from a Casket with Scenes from Courtly Romances, 1330-1350 or later, Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1978.39.b. Public Domain.

New Queer Medievalisms explores new directions in the study of queer, gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex and asexual medieval identities and simultaneously expands the work of the queer Middle Ages beyond early English and continental studies. This series extends the important work of investigating the intersection of queer theory with the study of the Middle Ages by expanding the conception of queerness and queer identity.

Keywords: queer, gender, medieval, medievalism, transgender, sexuality, religion, history

Geographical scope: Global

Chronological scope: ca. 400-1500 CE

Editorial Board

Will Rogers, University of Louisiana at Monroe, Series Editor
Michelle M. Sauer, University of North Dakota, Series Editor
Christopher Roman, Kent State University
Anna Klosowska, Miami University
Gabrielle Bychowski, Case Western Reserve University
Bill Burgwinkle, King's College, Cambridge
Natalie Grinnell, Wofford College

Submissions

To submit a proposal or completed manuscript to be considered for publication by Medieval Institute Publications or to learn more about New Queer Medievalisms, please contact Tyler Cloherty , the acquisitions editor for the series.

All Books in this Series

Forthcoming! Sadomasochistic Beowulf: Queer Narratives of Desire and Dissolution in Old English Literature

Cover of Sadomasochistic Beowulf: title text in yellow, on a purple background, above a drawing of a naked man with arm outstrected to the side, holding a severed arm behind his back and standing in front of an open doorway.

Sadomasochistic Beowulf: Queer Narratives of Desire and Dissolution in Old English Literature

By Christopher Vaccaro

Sadomasochistic Beowulf applies gender/queer theory to the study of Old English literature, advancing the knowledge of both fields. Its arguments are formulated through the works of Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, Judith Butler, Leo Bersani, Georges Bataille, and others.

The project explores a field of queer pleasures associated with the dispersal of the self, the extinguishing of the ego, the submission to a more dominant psyche, the postponement of jouissance, and with what Volker Wolterdorff calls "masochistic self-shattering."

The book covers a range of Old English texts from heroic verse narratives to the prose texts of devotional and penitential anthologies and relates these to the poem Beowulf.

Preorder Sadomasochistic Beowulf at De Gruyter Brill

Postmodern Poetry and Queer Medievalisms: Time Mechanics

Edited by David Hadbawnik

The poets under consideration in this volume demand that readers grapple with the ways in which we are still “medieval” – in other words, the ways in which the questions posed by their medieval source material still reverberate and hold relevance for today’s world. They do so by challenging the primacy of present over past, toppling the categories of old and new, and suggesting new interpretive frameworks for contemporary and medieval poetry alike -- in short, by “queering” our poetic past.

Buy Postmodern Poetry and Queer Medievalisms at De Gruyter

Medieval Futurity: Essays for the Future of a Queer Medieval Studies

Edited by Will Rogers and Christopher Michael Roman

This collection of essays asks contributors to take the capaciousness of the word "queer" to heart in order to think about what medieval queers would have looked like and how they may have existed on the margins and borders of dominant, normative sexuality and desire. The contributors work with recent trends in queer medieval studies, moving away from imposing modern concepts of sexuality and desire onto the Middle Ages, and instead mapping the queer configurations of eroticism, desire, and materiality as they might have existed for medieval audiences.

Buy Medieval Futurity at De Gruyter

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