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Podcast: Big Brains
Episode: The Hidden Truths About Sexuality And Gender In The Medieval World, with Roland Betancourt
Description: We often think our debates around sexuality and gender are a modern phenomenon. Some people argue that identities like trans and non-binary have only existed recently. But could the evidence for queer and gender-nonconforming lives actually stretch back centuries? In a recent book entitled Byzantine Intersectionality, Prof. Roland Betancourt of the University of California-Irvine uncovers an overlooked history from the Byzantine era. His work shows how surprisingly modern medieval conversations about sex and gender were—or, as he puts it, how medieval our modern conversations seem.As extremist groups on the alt-right have begun to claim...