Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Imagining the Male Menstruating Jew in Medieval Christian Thought: Queer Blood

Imagining the Male Menstruating Jew in Medieval Christian Thought: Queer Blood

Mayerhofer, Kerstin

Hardcover

Series: Borderlines

Medical ReferenceMedieval & Renaissance HistoryGeneral World History

Publisher Price: $165.00

PREORDER - Expected ship date January 31, 2027

ISBN10: 1802704116
ISBN13: 9781802704112
Publisher: ARC Humanities Press
Published: Jan 31 2027
Pages: 245
Language: English

This book uncovers a startling medieval fantasy: the belief that Jewish men menstruated. From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, Christian writers imagined the Jewish male body as leaky, feminized, and dangerously deviant. The figure emerged across theology, medicine, and polemic as a powerful symbol of disorder, collapsing boundaries between male and female, sacred and profane, Christian and Jew. Far from a marginal oddity, the menstruating Jew shaped Christian ideas of bodily normativity, religious difference, and moral hierarchy. Bringing together queer theory, historical scholarship, and close textual analysis, this book argues that this grotesque fantasy was not merely about antisemitism, but about managing deep fears surrounding gender, sexuality, and identity. In reframing how medieval Christians imagined Others, it offers a bold new contribution to the histories of religion, embodiment, and queerness.

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Medieval & Renaissance History

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