Book review: Byzantine intersectionality: sexuality, gender and race in the middle ages by Roland Betancourt

In Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender and Race in the Middle Ages, Roland Betancourt offers a new study that challenges the way that scholars have historically viewed Byzantine society and culture, using the methodology of intersectionality to uncover marginalised identities and recover medieval conversations around sexual and reproductive consent, sexual shaming and bullying, sexual attraction and desire, trans and nonbinary gender identities and the depiction of racialised minorities. This is an exciting and radical new project with an ethical dimension and urgency, writes Meaghan Allen, that seeks to illuminate forgotten figures and lived experiences that ripple through into our present moment. Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender and Race in the Middle Ages. Roland Betancourt. Princeton University Press. 2020.