The Shape of Sex

Leah DeVun's The Shape of Sex brilliantly realizes the promise of transgender studies and nonbinary frames of reference to provide compelling reinterpretations of gender and bodies not just in the present but also in the distant past. Through deep archival research, erudite textual scholarship, and dazzling methodological turns, DeVun shows how the figure of the nonbinary body has been central to Western theological, philosophical, legal, and scientific thought regarding proper social and cosmological order for more than two millennia. -- Susan Stryker, executive editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly
In this important and timely study, DeVun traces the ways in which medieval European legal, religious, and scientific authorities gradually constructed the idea that there are two and only two ‘opposite’ sexes. Putting to rest the myth of the premodern ‘one-sex’ body, DeVun highlights changing understandings of what counted as a ‘natural’ body and why. Essential reading for students of sex and gender in the medieval and modern West. -- Katharine Park, author of Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection
Eloquent, erudite, and deftly argued, this book explores the rich history of theories and representations of nonbinary sex in medieval culture, revealing their resonances with and divergences from modern and postmodern theories of intersex and transgender. DeVun’s book is an absolutely vital source for anyone seeking to understand the long trajectory of the concepts of sex and gender. This is a work that challenges and transforms normative ideas about embodiment in order to offer more capacious possibilities for human experience. -- Kathleen P. Long, author of Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe
In this meticulous yet accessible study, DeVun details the long historical roots of Western European sexual categories and those bodies that exceed them. In a thrilling final chapter, DeVun turns from theological, legal, natural-philosophical, and medical ideas of binary containment to the fevered world of alchemical thought, where nonbinary beings were viewed as ‘miraculous and productive.’ This book reveals the world-creating power of nonbinary beings in imagery and writings from the distant past, urging us ‘to let the past intrude, to be attentive to its iterations, and to keep the future open.’ -- Carolyn Dinshaw, author of How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time
The Shape of Sex is beautifully written, elegantly argued, and accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike. Leah DeVun's use of case studies draws the reader in, and the book's sophisticated elaborations of the import of the material shows familiarity with gender theory today as well as in the past. I especially value DeVun's attention to the intersection of race and gender. This will be the major study of the topic for many years to come. -- Ruth Evans, Dorothy McBride Orthwein Professor of English, Saint Louis University
The Shape of Sex is the book that all scholars should strive to write at least once in their lifetime: timely, accessible, and highly readable; diligently researched, meticulously conceptualized, and expansively impactful. Already, its mark is palpable both within the field of Medieval Studies and across a popular readership, particularly one invested in the histories of queer and trans peoples. -- Roland Betancourt * Medieval Review *
A major contribution to gender studies. It will remain a key reference work on premodern, nonbinary bodies. * Social History of Medicine *
DeVun has written a magnificent study of nonbinary embodiment in premodern Europe . . . The Shape of Sex is a lively and engaging book that will be of great use to historians, religious studies scholars, and those interested in gender and sexuality studies. Although the book deals with medieval texts and debates, the timelessness of the insights DeVun makes can’t be overstated. The central question of the text—'What does it mean to be human?'—is just as relevant today as it was in the premodern period. -- C. Libby * American Historical Review *
This book is, to put it simply, a revelation. In our current moment, when the rights of those of us who do not fit societal bodily, gender, and sexual norms are dwindling, this book feels frighteningly relevant and more important than ever to share with students. I can think of many courses in which this book should be required reading. * Reading Religion *
Demonstrating how sexual binarism is anything but an ahistorical and natural phenomenon. * Nuncius *
The historical findings of this book are intelligible and invaluable to contemporary sex and gender scholars. * Religious Studies Review *
A scholarly tour de force. It is a must-read for scholars of medieval sex and gender, for anyone seeking to understand modern views of binary sex and gender, and for those seeking to destabilize those binaries. * Journal of the History of Sexuality *
Suitable for a wide readership interested in gender and sexuality studies, as well as for religious
studies scholars, historians of philosophy and medicine, and those who are experts on the subject. * Early Science and Medicine *
Leah DeVun’s The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance is a massively important achievement in queer studies in the pre- and early modern periods. It is well written and well researched; it offers perspectives that have generally been overlooked if not outright ignored. But perhaps more than anything, DeVun demonstrates to readers that nonbinary gender and the records of the responses to it are productively complicated. * Speculum *