Winner, 2024 Haskins Medal, Medieval Academy of America

Winner, 2023 Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize, History of Science Society

Winner, 2022 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Historical Studies, American Academy of Religion

Honorable Mention, 2023 John Boswell Prize, The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History (CLGBTH)

Longlisted, 2022 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies, Lambda Literary Awards

The Shape of Sex is a pathbreaking history of nonbinary sex, focusing on ideas and individuals who allegedly combined or crossed sex or gender categories from 200–1400 C.E. Ranging widely across premodern European thought and culture, Leah DeVun reveals how and why efforts to define “the human” so often hinged on ideas about nonbinary sex.

The Shape of Sex examines a host of thinkers—theologians, cartographers, natural philosophers, lawyers, poets, surgeons, and alchemists—who used ideas about nonbinary sex as conceptual tools to order their political, cultural, and natural worlds. DeVun reconstructs the cultural landscape navigated by individuals whose sex or gender did not fit the binary alongside debates about animality, sexuality, race, religion, and human nature. The Shape of Sex charts an embrace of nonbinary sex in early Christianity, its brutal erasure at the turn of the thirteenth century, and a new enthusiasm for nonbinary transformations at the dawn of the Renaissance. Along the way, DeVun explores beliefs that Adam and Jesus were nonbinary-sexed; images of “monstrous races” in encyclopedias, maps, and illuminated manuscripts; justifications for violence against purportedly nonbinary outsiders such as Jews and Muslims; and the surgical “correction” of bodies that seemed to flout binary divisions.

In a moment when questions about sex, gender, and identity have become incredibly urgent, The Shape of Sex casts new light on a complex and often contradictory past. It shows how premodern thinkers created a system of sex and embodiment that both anticipates and challenges modern beliefs about what it means to be male, female—and human.

"The Shape of Sex is the book that all scholars should strive to write at least once in their lifetime: timely, accessible, and highly readable; diligently researched, meticulously conceptualized, and expansively impactful. Already, its mark is palpable both within the field of Medieval Studies and across a popular readership, particularly one invested in the histories of queer and trans peoples." - Medieval Review

"A major contribution to gender studies. It will remain a key reference work on premodern, nonbinary bodies." - Social History of Medicine

"DeVun has written a magnificent study of nonbinary embodiment in premodern Europe . . . The Shape of Sex is a lively and engaging book that will be of great use to historians, religious studies scholars, and those interested in gender and sexuality studies. Although the book deals with medieval texts and debates, the timelessness of the insights DeVun makes can’t be overstated. The central question of the text—'What does it mean to be human?'—is just as relevant today as it was in the premodern period." - American Historical Review

"This book is, to put it simply, a revelation. In our current moment, when the rights of those of us who do not fit societal bodily, gender, and sexual norms are dwindling, this book feels frighteningly relevant and more important than ever to share with students. I can think of many courses in which this book should be required reading." - Reading Religion

"Demonstrating how sexual binarism is anything but an ahistorical and natural phenomenon." - Nuncius

"The historical findings of this book are intelligible and invaluable to contemporary sex and gender scholars." - Religious Studies Review

"A scholarly tour de force. It is a must-read for scholars of medieval sex and gender, for anyone seeking to understand modern views of binary sex and gender, and for those seeking to destabilize those binaries." - Journal of the History of Sexuality

"Suitable for a wide readership interested in gender and sexuality studies, as well as for religious
studies scholars, historians of philosophy and medicine, and those who are experts on the subject." - Early Science and Medicine

"Leah DeVun’s The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance is a massively important achievement in queer studies in the pre- and early modern periods. It is well written and well researched; it offers perspectives that have generally been overlooked if not outright ignored. But perhaps more than anything, DeVun demonstrates to readers that nonbinary gender and the records of the responses to it are productively complicated." - Speculum