Research Focus Group Talk: Discussing The Shape of Sex with Leah DeVun

Join the Un-disciplining Premodern Histories of Race and Gender Research Focus Group for a guest talk and conversation with Professor Leah DeVun on DeVun’s new book, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. We will discuss the rich history DeVun traces in premodern Europe through the intersections of race, religion, sex, and gender.

Leah DeVun is Associate Professor of History and Vice Chair for Undergraduate Education at Rutgers University, as well as a multi-media artist and curator. DeVun focuses on the history of gender, sexuality, science, and medicine in pre-modern Europe, and on contemporary queer and transgender studies. DeVun is also the author of Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time, winner of the 2013 John Nicholas Brown Prize, and co-editor (with Zeb Tortorici) of Trans*historicities, a special issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly (2018) devoted to transgender history before the advent of current categories and terminologies of gender. DeVun has also written articles for GLQ, WSQ, Osiris, Journal of the History of Ideas, postmedieval, and Radical History Review, among other publications. DeVun is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Science Foundation, Huntington Library, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, American Philosophical Society, and Stanford Humanities Center.

Please register for the Zoom attendance link here and contact Jessica Zisa (jessicazisa@ucsb.edu) and Reem Taha (reemtaha@ucsb.edu) if you have any questions.

Sponsored by the IHC’s Un-disciplining Premodern Histories of Race and Gender Research Focus Group