Byzantine Lives: Discussing Nonbinary Sexuality, Gender, and Race in Byzantium

Abstract

Roland Betancourt’s thought-provoking monograph raises a series of questions concerning sexuality, prejudice, and racism in late antiquity and in the medieval world. It stimulates more careful reflection on gender and race-related matters, with particular attention to intersectionality, a word the activist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw coined back in 1989, referring to the intersections of different forms of oppression, namely, racism and sexism, as a way to explain the condition of African American women.1 This innovative book has all the requirements necessary to broaden the perspective of scholars of Byzantine literature, as it shows that many gender-related issues are extremely multifaceted and far more complex than one might initially suspect. The wealth of sources (literary and nonliterary) investigated in this volume is impressively wide: it includes saints’ Lives, medical handbooks, historical works, letters, and poetry. These are not analyzed merely for their content but also in relation to coeval works of art, such as medieval frescoes or mosaics and material objects, set in a dialectic relationship, which then serves to cast further light on the written sources. This interdisciplinary approach is fruitful and stimulating not only