The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe

The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe provides a comprehensive overview of the gender rules encountered in Europe in the period between approximately 500 and 1500 C.E. The essays collected in this volume speak to interpretative challenges common to all fields of women's and gender history - that is, how best to uncover the experiences of ordinary people from archives formed mainly by and about elite males, and how to combine social histories of lived experiences with cultural histories of gendered discourses and identities. The collection focuses on Western Europe in the Middle Ages but offers some consideration of medieval Islam and Byzantium.

The Handbook is structured into seven sections: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thought; law in theory and practice; domestic life and material culture; labour, land, and economy; bodies and sexualities; gender and holiness; and the interplay of continuity and change throughout the medieval period. It contains material from some of the foremost scholars in this field, and it not only serves as the major reference text in medieval and gender studies, but also provides an agenda for future new research.

Judith M. Bennett is John R. Hubbard Professor of History, University of Southern California,Ruth Mazo Karras, Professor of History, University of Minnesota

Judith M. Bennett teaches women's history and medieval history at the University of Southern California. She is the author of a number of books and articles on medieval women and on the feminist practice of history, as well as a popular textbook on medieval European history.

Ruth Mazo Karras teaches history at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of five books and numerous articles in medieval history and the history of gender and sexuality. She is a co-editor of the journal Gender and History, General Editor of the Middle Ages Series at the University of Pennsylvania Press, and a former president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians.

1. Introduction: Women, Gender, and Medieval Historians, Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras
Gendered Thinking
2. Gender and the Christian Traditions, Dyan Elliott
3. Jewish Traditions about Women and Gender Roles: From Rabbinic Teachings to Medieval Practice, Judith R. Baskin
4. Women and Gender in Islamic Traditions, Jonathan Berkey
5. The Political Traditions of Female Rulership in Medieval Europe, Amalie Foessel
6. Medicine and Natural Philosophy: Naturalistic Traditions, Katharine Park
Looking through the Law
7. Women and Laws in Early Medieval Europe, Janet Nelson and Alice Rio
8. Conflicts over Gender in Civic Courts, Carol Lansing
9. Later Medieval Law in Community Context, Marie A. Kelleher
10. Brideprice, Dowry, and Other Marital Assigns, Susan Mosher Stuard
11. Women and Gender in Canon Law, Sara McDougall
Domestic Lives
12. Gendering Demographic Change in the Middle Ages, Maryanne Kowaleski
13. Genders and Material Culture, Katherine French
14. Gender and Daily Life in Jewish Communities, Elisheva Baumgarten
15. Carolingian Domesticities, Rachel Stone
16. Public and Private Space and Gender in Medieval Europe, Sarah Rees Jones
17. Pious Domesticities, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane
Land, Labor, Economy
18. Slavery, Sally McKee
19. Urban Economies, Kathryn Reyerson
20. Rural Economies, Jane Whittle
21. Aristocratic Economies, Joanna Drell
Bodies, Pleasures, Desires
22. Caring for Gendered Bodies, Monica H. Green
23. The Byzantine Body, Kathryn Ringrose
24. Same-Sex Possibilities, Helmut Puff
25. Performing Courtliness, E. Jane Burns
Engendering Christian Holiness
26. Gender and the Initial Christianization of Northern Europe (to 1000 CE), Lisa M. Bitel
27. The Gender of the Religious: Wo/men and the Invention of Monasticism, Albrecht Diem
28. Women and Reform in the Central Middle Ages, Fiona Griffiths
29. Devoted Holiness in the Lay World, Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker
30. Cults of Saints, Miri Rubin
31. Heresy and Gender in the Middle Ages, John H. Arnold
32. Cultures of Devotion, Kathleen Ashley
Turning Points and Places
33. The Bride of Christ, the "Male Woman", and the Female Reader in Late Antiquity, Kate Cooper
34. Gender at the Medieval Millennium, Constance Berman
35. Gender in the Transition to Merchant Capitalism, Martha Howell
36. Toward the Witch Craze, Laura Stokes
37. Towards Feminism: Christine de Pizan, Female Advocacy, and Women's Textual Communities in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond, Roberta L. Krueger