My dissertation project examines the various interpretations of hermaphrodites in Western Europe between the 11th and 15th centuries. Since antiquity, the term “hermaphrodite” has referred to individuals who possess both male and female sexual characteristics. The corpus of sources consists of medical, natural-philosophical, alchemical, canonical, and legal texts. The project explores the mechanisms and argumentative structures through which the gender ambiguity of hermaphrodites was incorporated into existing social order structures across these different types of sources. From the elimination of ambiguity to its domestication and tolerance, various mechanisms for dealing with ambiguity can be identified. The dissertation highlights how these interpretations influence one another and where synergies or conflicts arise.

Surgical and medical sources particularly focus on the physical aspects of non-binary individuals and attempt to integrate these deviations into their conceptions of bodies and gender. Legal and canonical texts primarily address the ambiguity of hermaphrodites in terms of their indeterminate status between what we today understand as sex (biological gender) and gender (social gender), seeking new normative approaches to incorporate them into legal frameworks. Key questions in these texts revolve around legal status, eligibility for fiefdoms, and marriage or ordination rights. In contrast, natural-philosophical texts, including so-called bestiaries, group hermaphrodites among “wondrous peoples” and use their ambiguous bodies to draw a boundary between the human and the non-human. Similarly, alchemical sources view the hermaphrodite not as an individual but as a collective figure representing the concept of duality.

• History of the body and gender 
• Medical history 
• Historical cartography

• Übung: Reisen, Entdecken und Darstellen: Die Welt in mittelalterlichen Karten
• Übung: Reisen im Mittelalter
• Proseminar: Körperbilder und Geschlechterkonstruktionen im Mittealter
• Tutorium: Einführung in die Mediävistik
• Tutorium: Einführung in die Geschichtswissenschaft

• Mediävistenverband
• Arbeitskreis Historische Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung e.V.
• Arbeitskreis mediävistischer NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen, Universität Rostock
• Graduiertenakademie der Universität Rostock
• Verein für Rostocker Geschichte e.V.