Classically queer : eunuchs and androgynes in rabbinic Literature
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation, Classically Queer: Eunuchs and Androgynes in Rabbinic Literature, asks what we can learn about both gender and Judaism when we move beyond male and female. This study analyzes late antique legal discourse about bodies that are roughly analogous to contemporary transgender and intersex categories. The study of eunuchs and androgynes can challenge current scholarly consensus on gender in the Babylonian Talmud. The canonical status of the Talmud, and its influence on contemporary Jewish practice, means that these sixth century categories of gender continue to impact Jews today. This dissertation contextualizes rabbinic literature within the larger cultural world of late antiquity, while pairing Talmudic texts with queer theory (primarily the recent sub-field of queer temporality), intersex and transgender autobiography, and feminist scholarship on the Talmud. Feminist scholarship on the Talmud is an established sub-field, however, little of it focuses centrally on masculinity. There are excellent reasons to focus on women in rabbinic literature as a corrective to scholarship that fails to take women into account. However, the rabbinic understanding of masculinity underpins the androcentrism of the Babylonian Talmud; therefore analyses that center masculinity are crucial in fleshing out the function of gender in this canonical body of literature. This dissertation finds that the Talmud cannot be said to have a singular discourse on masculinity: from the Temple to the male householder, male bodies function as both the ideal subjects and damage-prone objects in rabbinic literature. Thus the rabbinic formulation of masculinity is fractured and multiple, and requires multiple theoretical approaches in order to produce a more nuanced portrait of the function of androcentrism. Queering gender, bodily time, and sexuality, this study argues that eunuchs and androgynes sketch the boundaries of normative masculinity in relief. In the end, far from constituting a footnote, the extended meditations in the Talmud on eunuchs and androgynes are central to the rabbinic project of (re-) imagining a gendered legal system.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Strassfeld, Max K |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Religious Studies. |
| Primary advisor | Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva |
| Thesis advisor | Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva |
| Thesis advisor | Voss, Barbara L, 1967- |
| Thesis advisor | Weitzman, Steven, 1965- |
| Advisor | Voss, Barbara L, 1967- |
| Advisor | Weitzman, Steven, 1965- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Max K. Strassfeld. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Religious Studies. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Max Kayla Lynch Strassfeld
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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