Queer Hrotsvit
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Society for the Study of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages (SSHMA)
Organizer Name
Graham N. Drake, Colleen Butler
Organizer Affiliation
SUNY-Geneseo, Univ. of Toronto
Presider Name
Graham N. Drake
Paper Title 1
Reading Gender in Hrotsvit through Donatus
Presenter 1 Name
Colleen Butler
Paper Title 2
If You Can't Stand the Heat, Deny There's a Kitchen: When Straight Boys Can't Face Up To the Big Noise of Gandersheim
Presenter 2 Name
David Townsend
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Univ. of Toronto
Paper Title 3
Unsettling Categories: Hrotsvit's Reframing of the Drusiana Legend
Presenter 3 Name
Helene Scheck
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. at Albany
Start Date
10-5-2013 1:30 PM
Session Location
Valley II 204
Description
Over the course of her lifetime, the tenth-century Saxon canoness Hrotsvit of Gandersheim produced three books of religious legends, plays, and epics based upon classical models and composed in Latin verse. As previous scholars have observed, Hrotsvit’s literary corpus demonstrates a pervasive concern with issues of gender and sexuality; most of her major characters are female, and her works contain depictions of sexual virginity, homosexuality, necrophilia, fetishism, rape, incest, and prostitution. The goal of this session to explore the ways in which Hrotsvit “queers” early medieval conceptions of gender and sexuality within an explicitly Christian framework. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: female homosociality, homosexuality, the sexual dimensions of mystical marriage, sexual desire, perversion, femininity/masculinity, the body, etc.
Colleen Butler
University of Toronto
Queer Hrotsvit
Valley II 204
Over the course of her lifetime, the tenth-century Saxon canoness Hrotsvit of Gandersheim produced three books of religious legends, plays, and epics based upon classical models and composed in Latin verse. As previous scholars have observed, Hrotsvit’s literary corpus demonstrates a pervasive concern with issues of gender and sexuality; most of her major characters are female, and her works contain depictions of sexual virginity, homosexuality, necrophilia, fetishism, rape, incest, and prostitution. The goal of this session to explore the ways in which Hrotsvit “queers” early medieval conceptions of gender and sexuality within an explicitly Christian framework. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: female homosociality, homosexuality, the sexual dimensions of mystical marriage, sexual desire, perversion, femininity/masculinity, the body, etc.
Colleen Butler
University of Toronto