Studying at York
Late Medieval Sexualities - MST00086M
- Department: Centre for Medieval Studies
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: M
- Academic year of delivery: 2022-23
- See module specification for other years: 2023-24
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Spring Term 2022-23 |
Module aims
The module aims to:
- Develop skills of source analysis and interpretation
- Assess a range of source material and relevant secondary works; and
- Develop students’ powers of evidence-based historical argument, both orally and in writing.
Module learning outcomes
After completing this module students should have:
- An understanding of the history of late medieval sexualities and their relationships to intellectual and legal cultures.
- Familiarity with relevant primary sources for late medieval sexual desires and identities and their interpretation.
- An understanding of and ability to critique the key methodological and interpretive approaches to the history of late medieval sexualities.
Module content
Late medieval societies were obsessed with understanding and classifying sexuality, from didactic handbooks outlining the many branches of the sin of lust, to Aristotelian scientific treatises on the mechanics of reproduction. Medieval authors were deeply interested in both the biological/psychological nature of desire itself, and in its expression through acts, identities, and social relations. These cultural and intellectual constructions of sexuality in turn informed the lived experience of sex through their influence on mechanisms of social control and regulation such as the law and pastoral care. The aim of this module is to investigate medieval understandings of sexuality and interrogate the relationships between theory and practice in the classification and regulation of sex.
This module looks at sexualities in late medieval Europe from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Our main focus will be on the cultures of England and France, though we will also bring in case studies from Germany, the Low Countries, and Italy. We will analyse medieval theoretical approaches and lived experiences of sexuality through a diverse range of primary sources in translation, including conduct literature, court documents, gynaecological treatises, and letters, as well as the histories of their interpretation. We will engage with fields such as queer/trans studies, feminist historical methodologies, and other theoretical approaches to thinking about the intersection of sexuality, knowledge, and power. We will explore the major controversies in the historiography of medieval sexualities such as the nature of premodern sexual categories and the question of whether medieval societies can be classified as heteronormative or pre-heteronormative. We will further interrogate the field’s relationship to broader scholarly questions of identity, power, and the radical political potential of medieval studies.
Students will attend eight weekly two-hour seminars in weeks 2-9. The provisional outline for the module is as follows:
1. ‘Compulsory heterosexuality’ and bourgeois self-fashioning
2. The ‘monstrous’ woman and female sexual appetites
3. Rape and the law
4. Sex work and the late medieval town
5. Locating the sodomite: queer identities and subcultures
6. Transgender expressions, transgender desires
7. Sex, race, and the ‘sodomitic’ Muslim in the Christian imaginary
8. Debating the ‘persecuting society’
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
CMS Students are expected to develop their essay topic in consultation with staff teaching on the module, and they are also strongly encouraged to submit a draft of their essay for feedback before the end of term. The draft essay replaces any formative assessment assignments and is a unique opportunity given to CMS students in recognition of the challenges they face in writing in an unfamiliar discipline.
Draft essays are normally submitted to the relevant staff member by the beginning of week 9 at the latest, in order to receive feedback by the end of term. The word limit for the draft essay is 2,500 words.
Students will then submit a 3,500 - 4,000-word assessed essay for the summative assessment in week 1 of the spring term.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required.
Indicative reading
For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at
the following items of preliminary reading:
- John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)
- Carolyn Dinshaw, Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999)
- Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others (London: Routledge, 2017)
- Kim M. Phillips and Barry Reay, Sex Before Sexuality: A Premodern History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011)