Trans Historical: Gender Plurality before the Modern

by Greta LaFleur (Editor), Masha Raskolnikov (Editor), Anna Klosowska (Editor)

Trans Historical explores the plurality of gender experiences that flourished before the modern era, from Late Antiquity to the eighteenth century, across a broad geographic range, from Spain to Poland and Byzantium to Boston. Refuting arguments that transgender people, experiences, and identities were non-existent or even impossible prior to the twentieth century, this volume focuses on archives―literary texts, trial transcripts, documents, and artifacts―that denaturalize gender as a category. The volume historicizes the many different social lives of sexual differentiation, exploring what gender might have been before modern medicine, the anatomical sciences, and the sedimentation of gender difference into its putatively binary form. The volume's multidisciplinary group of contributors consider how individuals, communities, and states understood and enacted gender as a social experience distinct from the assignment of sex at birth. Alongside historical questions about the meaning of sexual differentiation, Trans Historical also offers a series of diverse meditations on how scholars of the medieval and early modern periods might approach gender nonconformity before the nineteenth-century emergence of the norm and the normal . Abdulhamit Arvas, University of Pennsylvania; Roland Betancourt, University of California, Irvine; M. W. Bychowski, Case Western Reserve University; Emma Campbell, Warwick University; Igor H. de Souza, Yale University; Leah DeVun, Rutgers University; Micah James Goodrich, University of Connecticut; Alexa Alice Joubin, George Washington University; Anna Kłosowska; Greta LaFleur; Scott Larson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Kathleen Perry Long, Cornell University; Robert Mills, University College London; Masha Raskolnikov; Zrinka Stahuljak, UCLA.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Queer, Gender, LGBT, Gender Studies, Medieval

402 pages, Paperback

Published November 15, 2021

About the author

Greta LaFleur is an associate professor of American studies at Yale University.

Reviews

[Pippa Catterall · Rating 4 out of 5]

To explain transness in the present our past needs to be uncovered. It’s important that this work is done to challenge a sometimes hysterical climate of contemporary transphobia. As M W Bychowski’s essay in this volume argues, there is a need to resist the occlusion of cistories. Yet this important collection also draws attention to the various methodological pitfalls that trans history presents. Indeed, the book closes with reflections from Greta LaFleur on the need to understand fluidity and resist the temptation to replace heteronormative binaries with cis/trans ones. Along the way the essays take us from the question of how to read the Roman emperor Eglabalus and other gender nonconforming figures in antiquity through to the representation of gender and gender-crossing in modern films of early modern subjects. Geographically the collection ranges from Korea to early modern America. The core focus, however, is in Europe and on a range of texts from literature, through sermons to court records. All of these, even mediaeval bestiaries, leave traces of transness. It is quite explicitly not a history of transness. It does, however, make an important contribution towards locating transness in history.

[Curry Crusted Brown Butter · Rating 1 out of 5]

The authors cherry-pick isolated individual narratives to fabricate an exaggerated narrative of gender variance. They omit the larger societal contexts that shaped gender-variant lives. LaFleur's epilogue undermines the book's own premise, backtracking to appease traditionalist views. The authors impose the modern concept of self-doubt as gender dysphoria onto premodern figures, misrepresenting historical realities. They stretch thin evidence to construct a fanciful tale that prioritizes their own ideological goals.

[grub · Rating 3 out of 5]

took me quite a while to get through this one! some of the essays were really interesting, some were eh, and some were like.... just because you CAN get a PhD in this, doesnt mean you SHOULD. very academic

[Mills College Library]

306.768 T7722 2021

[Eyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of essays ranging from medieval to modern.

[chloe]

and the entire thing is available on jstor!! woohoo https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/...

[Sara G]

Dense and tiring to read but so interesting, and with a lot of width in cultures covered.

[Savanah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly there are some good articles and then there are some that need to be taken out and replaced by people who know what they are taking about.

[Joey Mopsink · Rating 3 out of 5]

I see why this is divisive Lmao

[Madelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my reading list! I really loved this phenomenal collection of essays -- what a profound and amazing piece of work that will change the way we see the historicity of transness. I am so proud to say that one of my past professors was an editor and contributor to this work.

08/14/2023 -- now for my PhD, QE Transversal List. What a pleasure to keep coming back to this piece in my own work!

[Jodi Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great read, as it explores several trans figures from both the distant past and up through the 1800’s. Some of the chapters are slower to read as they are heavily academic, but others are more readable. In any case, worth slogging through the more academic parts for the great thought-provoking insights.

[yen nguyen]

read Kathleen Perry Long's essay "The Case of Marin le Marcis"