Robert Mills

A Practical Guide to Designing the Invisible

pain, pleasure and punishment in medieval culture

Suspended animation

Matt Cook

Harry Cocks

Randolph Trumbach

A narrative history of man-on-man sex and love from the Anglo Saxon period to the present day, this book explores some of the key issues of homosexuality.

Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages

A Gay History of Britain

First exploration of Jarman's engagement with the medieval, revealing its importance to his work.

Derek Jarman's Medieval Modern

Bettina Bildhauer

The figure of the monster in medieval culture functions as a vehicle for a range of intellectual and spiritual inquiries, from questions of language and representation to issues of moral, theological, and cultural value. Monstrosity is bound up with questions of body image and deformity, nature and knowledge, hybridity and horror. To explore a culture's attitudes to the monstrous is to comprehend one of its most important symbolic tools. The Monstrous Middle Ages looks at both the representation of literal monsters and the consumption and exploitation of monstrous metaphors in a wide variety of high and late-medieval cultural productions, from travel writings and mystical texts to sermons, manuscript illuminations and maps. Individual essays explore the ways in which monstrosity shaped the construction of gender and sexual identity, religious symbolism, and social prejudice in the Middle Ages. Reading the Middle Ages through its monsters provides an opportunity to view medieval culture from fresh perspectives. The Monstrous Middle Ages will be essential reading for anyone interested in the concept of monstrosity and its significance for both medieval cultural production and contemporary critical practice.

The Monstrous Middle Ages

When Marsellus in the film PulpFiction asserts, "I'm gonna git medieval on your ass," we know that he is about to bring down a fierce and exacting punishment. Yet is the violence of the Middle Ages that far removed from our modern society? Suspended Animation argues that not only is the stereotype of uncontrolled violence in the Middle Ages historically misleading, the gulf between modern society and the medieval era is not as immense as we might think. In fact, both medievals and moderns live within a social tension of "suspended animation" engendered by images and acts of violence. Just as in medieval times, Robert Mills argues, it is the threat of violence—not the reality—that continues to structure our lives. To illustrate this "aesthetics of suspense," Mills draws on extensive and disturbing examples from medieval iconography, contemporary philosophy, and even pornography, ranging from the vivid depictions of Hell in Tuscan frescoes to Billie Holiday's famously wrenching song "Strange Fruit". Mills reveals how these uncomfortable images and texts expose a modern self-deception, and he further explores how medieval images evoked a pleasure revealingly close to that found in modern depictions of sexuality. Suspended Animation also makes a fresh contribution to theoretical debates on pre-modern gender and sexuality. Mills's comprehensive analysis demonstrates that—as wartime prisoner abuse incidents at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay have recently indicated—our notions of ourselves as not-medieval (that is, civilized) not only fail to prepare us for modern torture and warfare but also lead us into complicity with self-proclaimed moral and civic leaders. Whether considering a medieval painting of a Christian martyr or the immense popularity of grotesque historical tourist attractions such as the London Dungeons, Suspended Animation argues that images of death and violence are as pervasive today as they were in the Middle Ages, serving as potent reminders of the link between the modern and the medieval era.

Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture

Suspended Animation

"During the Middle Ages in Europe, some sexual and gendered behaviors were labeled "sodomitical" or evoked the use of ambiguous phrases such as the "unmentionable vice" or the "sin against nature." How, though, did these categories enter the field of vision? How do you know a sodomite when you see one? In Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages, Robert Mills explores the relationship between sodomy and motifs of vision and visibility in medieval culture, on the one hand, and those categories we today call gender and sexuality, on the other. Challenging the view that ideas about sexual and gender dissidence were too confused to congeal into a coherent form in the Middle Ages, Mills demonstrates that sodomy had a rich, multimedia presence in the period--and that a flexible approach to questions of terminology sheds new light on the many forms this presence took. Among the topics that Mills covers are depictions of the practices of sodomites in illuminated Bibles; motifs of gender transformation and sex change as envisioned by medieval artists and commentators on Ovid; sexual relations in religious houses and other enclosed spaces; and the applicability of modern categories such as "transgender," "butch" and "femme," or "sexual orientation" to medieval culture."--Publisher's description.

Seeing sodomy in the Middle Ages

The Questions Nobody Asks

Where Do You Go from Here

The first narrative history of its kind since 1970, A Gay History of Britain tells the extraordinary history of male-male sex and love in Britain, in all its diversity, from the Middle Ages to the present.

Emma Campbell

Essays examining both the theory and practice of medieval translation.

Ethics, Politics, Theory

Rethinking Medieval Translation

The figure of the monster in medieval culture functions as a vehicle for a range of intellectual and spiritual inquiries, from questions of language and representation to issues of moral, theological and cultural value. Monsters embody cultural tensions that go far beyond the idea of the monster as simply an unintelligible and abject other. This text looks at both the representation of literal monsters and the consumption and exploitation of monstrous metaphors in a wide variety of high and late-medieval cultural productions, from travel writing and mystical texts, to sermons, manuscript illuminations and maps. Individual essays explore the ways in which monstrosity shaped the construction of gendered and racial identities, religious symbolism and social prejudice in the Middle Ages. Reading the Middle Ages through its monsters provides an opportunity to view medieval culture from fresh perspectives. It should be of interest in the concept of monstrosity and its significance for medieval cultural production.

With a General View of the Coast from the St. Lawrence to the Rio de Norte, Including and Account of the Lights on the Gulf of Mexico, Carribean [sic] Sea, and the South American Atlantic Coast; Sailing Directions for the Gulf and River St. Lawrence ...

The American Light-house Guide: with Sailing Directions, for the Use of the Mariner ...

Michael Deeb

The FBI insisted that one man killed President John F. Kennedy. The Warren Commission agreed. But, since those hurried investigations were completed, many investigators have disagreed with both declarations. On the contrary, many contend that there had to have been multiple assassins involved in the assassination, not just one.In this historical novel, readers will be led through the evidence to judge for themselves.Credible witnesses, law enforcement officials, bystanders and medical professionals had their testimonies ignored or falsified. Now, for the first time since the FBI investigation of 1963 and the Warren Commission study of 1964, witnesses will be allowed to tell once again what they saw and heard on November 22, 1963 in Dallas.Michael Burke and Harold Ryan will interview the same witnesses and look at the same evidence available to the FBI in 1963 and the Warren Commission's investigators in 1964. Now, for the first time since the Kennedy assassination, readers will have an opportunity to hear their testimony, see the evidence and answer the central question for themselves.Was Oswald the only assassin in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.

Was Oswald the Only Assasin?

The Kennedy Assassination

When senior nurse, Jenny Butcher, is strangled in her flat, Detective Inspector Sanjay Patel, a British-born Indian who dropped out of medical school to join the police, is part of the team led by Chief Inspector Tracy Taylor that investigates her murder. After divorcing her husband, Jenny had moved to London to make a fresh start.

Robert Mills

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