HIST 2082 - [Of Ice and Men: Masculinities in the Medieval North]

(crosslisted) FGSS 2082, MEDVL 2082, SHUM 2082
(HST-AS, SCD-AS) (D-AG, HA-AG)

Spring. Not offered: 2024-2025. Next offered: 2026-2027. 4 credits. Student option grading.

O. Falk.

The Middle Ages are usually imagined as a time of manly men and feminine women: no room for gender ambiguity in Conan the Barbarian! Yet gender, then as now, was in fact unstable, multiple, and above all, constructed. This course explores the different ways masculinity was understood, manufactured, and manipulated in northern Europe – primarily early Ireland, England, and Scandinavia – using a variety of literary, legal, historical, archaeological, and artistic sources. Students will gain new perspectives on both gender and sex, on the one hand, and the history of medieval Europe, on the other. (HPE, HEU)