Hosted by: SIMS and Kislak Center
Archival collections are political spaces: the decisions that govern whose histories are preserved, when, and by whom are not neutral. They reflect the communities that make them. For most of western history queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people were excluded from such communities. As a result, the experiences of premodern gender-divergent people went largely unreported and reconstructing such histories relies on the piecing together of ephemeral glimpses. Tackling these limitations requires generative modes of reading through the archive to seek out trans lives beyond the trace. Literary scholars have developed tactics and tools to read through such traces, but how do we move beyond the limits of the trace to uncover a more expansive history of premodern gender non-conformity?
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies Online Lecture Series presents regularly scheduled lectures related to the study of premodern manuscript books and global manuscript culture.
J. D. Sargan specializes in medieval English Literature, paleography, codicology, and the history of the book. He is the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook to the History of the Book in Medieval Western Europe, 650–1550 (forthcoming 2025) and of the medieval volume of A Cultural History of Trans Lives (forthcoming 2027).
Featured Image: Detail of roundel Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS Cod. 2554, fol. 1v. (Bible moralisée, Paris, 1225–1250)