Queering the Medieval Mediterranean: Transcultural Sea of Sex, Gender, Identity, and Culture: (121 The Medieval Mediterranean)

In ten essays authored by an international team of scholars, this volume explores queer readings of Western and Eastern Mediterranean Europe, Northern Africa, Islam and Arabic traditions. The contributors enter into a dialogue, comparing cases from opposite sides of the Mediterranean, in order to analyze the forgotten exchange of sexualities that was brought forth through the Mediterranean and its bordering landmasses during the Middle Ages. This collection questions the hypothesis that distinct cultures treated sexuality and the “other” differently. The volume initiates the conversation around queerness and sexuality on these trade routes, and problematizes the differences between various Mediterranean cultures in order to argue that through both queerness and sexuality, neighboring civilizations had access to, and knowledge of, common shared experiences. Contributors are Sahar Amer, Israel Burshatin, Robert L.A. Clark, Denise K. Filos, Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, Edmund Hayes, Gregory S. Hutcheson, Vicente Lledó-Guillem, Leyla Rouhi, and Robert S. Sturges.

Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors Introduction The Transcultural Medieval Mediterranean   Felipe E. Rojas and Peter E. Thompson part 1 Conquests 1 Anomalous al-Andalus Time, Space, Desire   Denise K. Filios 2 The Masculine Body in the Mediterranean Queering the Other in El Monserrate and Tirant lo Blanc   Vicente Lledó-Guillem part 2 Femininities 3 Bad Girls and Gender Trouble in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean   Sahar Amer 4 Going Between Bodies, Minds, and Spaces The Alcahueta as the Queer Third Party   Leyla Rouhi part 3 Literatures 5 Perversion and Subversion Mother Guidance and Illicit Sexuality in Ibn Dāniyāl’s Shadow Play   Edmund Hayes 6 Queer Names and Experiences in Old French and Romance Literatures   Ellen Lorraine Friedrich part 4 Captives 7 Beaucaire, “Cartage,” Torelore The Imaginary Mediterranean’s Queer Carnival in Aucassin et Nicolette   Robert S. Sturges 8 “Amor de voluntad”/“Love freely given” Homonormativity in Alfonso X, el Sabio’s Legislation on Captives   Israel Burshatin part 5 Encounters 9 Spain’s Pecado Sodomítico and Its Mediterranean Intertextualities   Gregory S. Hutcheson 10 At the Crossroads of Intercultural Desire in the Levant Cultural Notes from the Bathhouse   Robert L.A. Clark Index

About the Author :
Felipe E. Rojas, Ph.D. (2014), University of Chicago, is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at West Liberty University. His interest include Medieval and Golden Age Spanish literature, queer and gay studies, and mythology (specifically the figure of Ganymede). Peter E. Thompson, Ph.D. (1999), Penn State University, is an Associate Professor at Queen’s University. He has written extensively on Juan Rana, the alias of Cosme Pérez, a popular actor between the years 1617 and 1672 (Spanish Golden Age).