Book Panel: The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance (Columbia, 2021) by Leah DeVun

This roundtable discussion will feature responses to Leah DeVun’s book, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance (Columbia, 2021). The Shape of Sex is a history of diverse and contradictory ideas about nonbinary gender from 200-1400 CE, or from patristic theories of Adam as “primal androgyne” to alchemical accounts of the “Jesus hermaphrodite.” Respondents will comment on the book’s revelations about premodern history as well as its relevance for scholars of contemporary sex and gender.