Ep98. The Shape of Sex, Leah DeVun

I sat down with Leah DeVun to discuss her book, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. We talk about how widespread thinking and writing about non-binary individuals was during the first centuries of the CE and again in the C12th-14th, and the way non-binary bodies actually shaped the way a host of categories and boundaries (not just gender) were demarcated. We talk in detail about the shift in the C12th/13th and the way non-binary sex shaped the project of establishing a non-human other, justifying violence towards Jews and Muslims, and determining who could live in a Christian territory. We also talk about the figures of "Adam androgyne" and the "Jesus hermaphrodite", and how they function as "anchors of eschatological time." Finally, Leah discusses how this study can inform our present, not only by showing that the consideration of non-binary, trans*, and intersex bodies are not novel to our period, but how this consideration cuts through claims of 'natural and immutable' in our own day.

Buy the book.

Leah DeVun is Associate Professor of History and Vice Chair for Undergraduate Education at Rutgers University. Leah DeVun focuses on the history of gender, sexuality, science, and medicine in pre-modern Europe, as well as on contemporary queer and transgender studies. DeVun’s new book, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press (in spring 2021). 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.

DeVun is also a multi-media artist and curator whose work explores queer, feminist, and gender nonconforming history. DeVun’s artwork has been featured in Artforum, People, Huffington Post, Slate, Art Papers, Hyperallergic, and Modern Painters, and at venues including the ONE Archives Gallery and Museum at the University of Southern California, Houston Center for Photography, Blanton Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum, and Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College. DeVun has curated exhibitions and programs at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, NYU’s Fales Library and Special Collections, and other venues.

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