Leah DeVun

The Shape of Sex is a fascinating look at ideas about non-binary sex/bodies in western Europe from Late Antiquity through to the end of the Middle Ages. Leah DeVun argues that attempts to understand nonbinary sex were key to pre-modern European attempts to understand what it means to be human. For a book that deals with both modern theory and medieval philosophical/theological/alchemical writings, DeVun has produced a work which is highly readable. I could see this working really well in an show more advanced undergraduate classroom, as there's lots here to challenge both assumptions about how medieval people must have thought about the topic, and modern ideas about boundaries and categorisations. Both Chapters 3 (looking at depictions of hermaphroditic hyenas in medieval bestiaries and their antisemitic associations) and Chapter 5 (on representations of Jesus as a Divine Hermaphrodite) would surely provide fodder for much interesting classroom discussion. show less