Source: Diwan, Association des doctorants en Histoire des mondes musulmans médiévaux.
Conference organised by Almut Höfert, Hans Peter Pökel,
Matthew Mesley and Serena Tolino
From antiquity to modernity, pre-modern ruling systems
in different parts of the world often shared a common feature: the
participation of men who were either physically unable or normatively forbidden
to father children. One the one hand, there were the childless eunuchs who
fulfilled a variety of functions at courts in the Middle East, Byzantium and
China; they were much more than simply guardians of the harem. Due to their
specific “gender”, the eunuchs formed an integral part of the different ruling
systems; indeed, they held a central position in court politics, and their
loyalty towards the reigning dynasty was not conditional on nepotism or
favouritism towards their family, since they were childless. On the other hand,
we have the ruling priests: the celibate bishops both in the Byzantine Empire
and Latin Europe. Whereas the Eastern Church tolerated eunuchs as priests, the
Western Church demanded that a priest was not castrated, and that instead he
needed to have the willpower and resolve to remain celibate. Bishops, who
formed an integral part of the ruling elites in both the Western and Eastern
were subject to the same rules surrounding celibacy, and were prevented in
theory from fathering legitimate children.
Without aiming at a strict comparison between the two
groups, this conference wants to take the phenomenon of pre-modern ruling
systems that incorporate celibate or childless men, as a starting point in order
to address the following questions:
(1) What were
the political and economical consequences of integrating men who were childless
or without any legitimate children into the ruling elites and the respective
networks of family and kinship?
(2) If we take
the definition of gender by R. Connell in his classic study on Masculinities
(Gender as a social practice in relation to the “reproductive arena”), we might
expect specific gender conceptions for both priests and eunuchs. How should we
view these men: as a third gender; a hybrid gender; or as an asexual gender?
Were they always gendered in a specific way or only in certain contexts or
environments? And how did the actors perceive their own role in this respect?
Is gender still “a useful tool of historical analysis” (Joan Scott) even, or
should we adopt different approaches?
(3) What was
the relationship between these men and a divinely legitimized rule in respect
to sacredness?
In asking these questions, this conference aims to
shed light on the culture of political rule in a period before a strict
biological dichotomy of the sexes might be said to have existed. We hope that
the ensuing discussion and debate will open up new perspectives on the
connections, parallels and peculiarities that can be discovered between rule
and gender on a pre-modern global level. The papers will explore such themes
within the Middle East, the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, Latin
Europe, China and other geographic areas.
Currently there is space for two doctoral candidates
to deliver a 25-minute paper on any geographical area. Financial support will
include accommodation and travel costs to and from the conference. Current
speakers include:
· Hugh
Kennedy (SOAS, University of London)
· Jane Hathaway
(Ohio State University)
· Tougher
(Cardiff University)
· Nadia
el-Cheikh (American University in Beirut):
· Mathew
Kuefler (San Diego State University)
· Hans
Peter Pökel (FU, Berlin)
· Metin
Kunt (Sabanci University, Istanbul)
· Stephen
Marritt (University of Glasgow)
· Rachel
Stone (King’s College London)
· Ruby Lal
(Emory University, Atlanta)
· Jennifer
Jay (University of Alberta)
· Antje
Flüchter (University of Heidelberg)
· Shane
Gannon (Mount Royal University, Calgery)
· Michael
Höckelmann (University of Münster)
· Serena
Tolino (University of Zürich)
· Matthew
Mesley (University of Zurich)
If interested please send a 1 page CV along with an
abstract of not more than 300 words to matthew.mesley@uzh.ch, by March 31st
2013.