Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography presents an interdisciplinary examination of trans and genderqueer subjects in medieval hagiography. Scholarship has productively combined analysis of medieval literary texts with modern queer theory – yet, too often, questions of gender are explored almost exclusively through a prism of sexuality, rather than gender identity. This volume moves beyond such limitations, foregrounding the richness of hagiography as a genre integrally resistant to limiting binaristic categories, including rigid gender binaries. The collection showcases scholarship by emerging trans and genderqueer authors, as well as the work of established researchers. Working at the vanguard of historical trans studies, these scholars demonstrate the vital and vitally political nature of their work as medievalists. Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography enables the re-creation of a lineage linking modern trans and genderqueer individuals to their medieval ancestors, providing models of queer identity where much scholarship has insisted there were none, and re-establishing the place of non-normative gender in history.

Spencer-Hall Alicia :

Alicia Spencer-Hall is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London. Their research interests include: medieval hagiography, disability, gender, digital culture, and film and media studies. Her first monograph, Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2018, and is now available Open Access. Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, a collection co-edited with Blake Gutt, was published in 2021. Shortlisted for the Transgender Non-Fiction award at the 34th Lambda Literary Awards, the volume is now also available Open Access. Their second monograph, Medieval Twitter, was published by Arc Humanities Press in 2024.Gutt Blake :

Blake Gutt is a postdoctoral scholar with the Michigan Society of Fellows (University of Michigan, USA). He specializes in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French, Occitan and Catalan literature, and modern queer and trans theory.Spencer-Hall Alicia :

Alicia Spencer-Hall is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London. Their research interests include: medieval hagiography, disability, gender, digital culture, and film and media studies. Her first monograph, Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2018, and is now available Open Access. Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, a collection co-edited with Blake Gutt, was published in 2021. Shortlisted for the Transgender Non-Fiction award at the 34th Lambda Literary Awards, the volume is now also available Open Access. Their second monograph, Medieval Twitter, was published by Arc Humanities Press in 2024.

"The first thing one observes about Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography is that it is a beautiful object. The cover image, by medievalist and artist Jonah Coman, is a sumptuous study in gold, like a Book of Hours, with vignettes of both holy images and protest marches in a band that encircles an image of a medieval saint holding a trans pride flag. We do not often talk about the physical form of scholarly books, but this one is a joy to hold. It is also a useful object, containing an appendix on trans and genderqueer terminology, language, and usage that serves as an important snapshot of how to talk about gender in the early twenty-first century and should prove enormously useful to those just coming to explore trans studies. [...] With this kind of work in the offering, the future of the profession has a chance to be as wonderful as this collection."
- Masha Raskolnikov, The Medieval Review22.03.10 (2022)

"The inspiring volume is a must-read for all scholars working with religion and history. Most importantly, it is an admirable effort to dismantle cis-heteronormative conceptions of the Middle Ages (propagated alarmingly by white supremacist groups). [...] The volume is of the utmost importance for the trans and genderqueer people of today, as it is in essence a serious academic endeavour to imagine a transgender past and, thus, offer a sense of historical belonging."
- Rose-Marie Peake, Mirator 1/21 (2021)

"By establishing transness as holy, the authors are not only working to put trans and genderqueer subjects back into the narrative of history, but at its center. Transness is being rewritten as something beautiful and divine."
- - Milo, What Lives Here Now blog (2021)

"In this important volume, Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt bring together scholarship that rethinks, in creatively productive ways, how gender figures in medieval representations of sainthood and sanctity. [...] All the varied scholarship collected here is excellent, and the volume as a whole mounts a persuasive and invigorating argument about the importance of attending to trans and genderqueer texts and experiences in the Middle Ages."
- Steven F. Kruger, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures

"Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography is an excellent collection that, by offering a platform for both new and established scholars to revisit their earlier assessments of medieval texts, offers an understanding of the past predicated upon the need for a more just future."
- Alexander Flores, Comitatus, Vol. 53, 2022

“Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography is a landmark in trans medieval studies, engaging the imperatives of the field sustainedly through a diverse, interdisciplinary collection of materially rich and critically challenging work.”
-- Nick Mayhew, TSQ (2022) Vol. 9, No. 2

“Key to their understanding of the historical excavation of trans-ness is the term’s capaciousness, embracing not only identities and embodiments but the essential work of “disrupting normative and essentializing frameworks”, including the assumptions of premodern scholars.”
- Karma Lochrie, “Nonbinary and Trans Premodernities”, Exemplaria (2022) Vol 34, No. 4