Liz James (1)

Women, Men and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium is a series nine academic articles compiled into this relatively small volume on gender in the Byzantine Empire. I say relatively small because it is a 207 page text but at best only about 151 pages of the book are actually reading material (if you include the introduction). Over 25% of the book is actually just extensive citation notes. This is both good and bad in that a good portion of the books is not reading material but at the same time it also means that the articles are well researched.

This book is very academic and most articles assume at least some familiarity not only with the general history of Byzantium but of specific Byzantine figures especially royal Byzantine Queens and Kings. If you don't know who these figures are you could become easily lost in the articles. If your not already familiar with Byzantine history and Royalty I would suggest maybe reading a few Wikipedia articles and making yourself a quick outline of major events and perhaps royal family lines and successions to keep handy while reading. This book is not just a casual history reader and it's academic nature can be difficult to follow (especially if your not familiar with the characters they are talking about). Most of the book deals almost exclusively with studies on women with only a few exceptions at the end in which it addresses eunuchs and "homo byzantius" which is simply Byzantine man and not to be confused with a term to discuss homosexuality in Byzantium.

My personal interest in this book was almost exclusively in regards to the article on Orientalism and Female Dance/Public Performance. To that extent the book was highly informative and very interesting. It offers some thought provoking questions about the way that we examine stories such as Salome, how Orientalism has contributed to certain interpretations about Byzantine ideas and behaviors and how our modern ideas about gender are formed almost exclusively on only the aspects of women's lives which fell outside of their normal roles and were considered indecent or inappropriate and the importance of the male gaze and active vs. passive gender and sexuality. There were many interesting insights into the roles women did and were allowed to play both acceptable and not in Byzantine culture which would certainly be of interest to anyone who is fascinated by women's studies but it also has some very interesting insights which offer some comparison to modern ideas on women's roles in life and specifically as leaders and performers.

It contained some interesting information on eunuchs and that is probably not what most people would be expecting and possibly go against many peoples ideas of the role and life of Eunuchs within Byzantine culture. Not being my main area of interest or study I cannot really comment much on the content of that particular article. The last chapter on Homo Byzantius seemed unnecessary to me. It pretty much tells us what is already pretty obvious about male gender through the already almost exclusively male writings of Byzantine authors. Overall I would recommend this for anyone who is interested in Byzantine History, Dance Ethnology/Ethnography/History, Early Christian Gender constructs, and Gender Studies in general and specifically Women's Studies.… (altro)