New approaches to sexual violence in Byzantine hagiography (5th-12th centuries)

This project will propose a radically new understanding of the gendered and racialised portrayal of sexual violence in Byzantine hagiographies from the 5th to the 12th centuries, by addressing the following questions: A) How does the hypersexualisation of certain figures complicate our ability to identify victims and perpetrators of sexual violence? B) How are racialised descriptions weaponised in personifications of sexual threat? C) How does the

gendering of the victims change the stories we tell about the violence they experience? Answering these questions will shed light both on Byzantine sexuality and on hagiography as a genre.