The title of Lauren Groff’s ambitious new novel, Matrix, is deliberately multivalent. In Latin, it points us toward the leader […]
Medieval Bodies, Head to Toe
The skeletal diagram in Mansur ibn Ilyas’s fifteenth-century medical text, the Tashrih-i badan-i insan, looks at first glance like it’s […]
When Third Place is a Win
On September 30, 2019, medieval historian Ruth Karras launched a poll on Twitter. “What medieval woman should I nominate,” she […]
Teaching Abélard and Héloïse
One of the wearying inevitabilities of 2018 was that even the most cursory glance at the news was likely to […]
Gender-Bending in Thirteenth-Century Literature: The Roman de Silence
Do genetics or environmental factors determine one’s gender identity? The question may seem a distinctly modern one. Indeed, premodern people […]
