This project examines 'gender' in Byzantium, looking specifically at how 'gender' may be used as a tool of historical analysis in a pre-modern culture and society. Clearly, part of the definition of 'gender' is modern, but the project seeks to validate modern conceptions of gender against Byzantine implicit articulations of gender stereotypes: what it meant in Byzantium to be a woman, a man, and perhaps most interestingly a eunuch?

One of the most interesting, yet most difficult aspects of feminist inspired definition of gender studies for the academy to grapple with is the stress laid on 'experience' as a valid, important and indeed necessary corrective to theoretical speculations. As experiences are different, so too are the ways in which the experiences of 'gender' in Byzantium are examined.

One database of empresses brings together representations and accounts of empresses in literature and art across the whole Byzantine period in order to see how different sources match up or provide contrasting evidence and how that evidence changes over time.

Each year, the gender colloquium focuses on the theme of masculinities and feminities in Byzantium, the ways in which the Byzantines defined gender, looks at the ways in which gender was defined through art (how to represent 'male' and 'female'), literature (how to describe 'male' and 'female') and archaeology, the actual physical location of men, women and eunuchs.

Publications: Several books will are to be published as part of the project: Liz James, Empresses and power in early Byzantium was published in 2001 (Leicester University Press). An edited volume, based on the first two colloquia, which looked at masculinities is being prepared for publication. A further volume, based on subsequent colloquia will follow.

MA: Gender modules (1. Women, men and eunuchs: gender in Byzantium; 2. Jewish Women in Byzantium; and 3. Homosexuality in Mediterranean medieval cultures) are available as part of the MA in Art and Text at Belfast and Sussex.

Contacts: Liz James, Dion Smythe