Lecturing with Chapter 10

On Thursday, I conceded to student demand and lectured on beer. Not much of general use, there. But my Tuesday lecture might be useful to think with. It was on Race & Gender in Medieval Europe.

1. Medieval Conceptions of Race. I mostly followed Robert Bartlett here.

2. “Imagined Others” Outside Europe. I talked briefly about ideas, inherited from Pliny et al., about monstrous races on the edges of the world.

3. Imagined Africans. I talked about how “black” was figured negatively in European culture. We then looked at positive (St Maurice, Black Madonnas), exotic (e.g., Balthasar), and negative (execution of John the Baptist, crucifixion) images of Africans in medieval art.

4. Medieval Science & Religion on Gender Differences. For science, I talked the authorities used to justify gender differences; the gendering of humoral theory; ideas about conception; ideas about femaleness as an necessary error in gestation; and, of course, the one-sex theory. For religion, I talked about the authorities deployed; Eve and BVM; misogyny and misogamy.

5. Gender Rules on the Ground. I talked briefly about the real experiences of women, as mostly excluded from formal political life, mostly expected to be dependent socially, and as to economy, mostly confined to low status occupations. I also reminded them of what we've seen earlier vis-a-vis women in (a) monastic life and (b) education & intellectual life.