The Oxford handbook of women and gender in medieval Europe / edited by Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Women, gender, and medieval historians;
Gender and the Christian traditions;
Jewish traditions about women and gender roles : from rabbinic teachings to medieval practice;
Women and gender in Islamic traditions;
political traditions of female rulership in medieval Europe;
Medicine and natural philosophy : naturalistic traditions;
Women and laws in early medieval Europe;
Conflicts over gender in civic courts;
Later medieval law in community context;
Brideprice, dowry, and other marital assigns;
Women and gender in canon law;
Gendering demographic change in the middle ages;
Genders and material culture;
Gender and daily life in Jewish communities;
Carolingian domesticities;
Public and private space and gender in medieval Europe;
Pious domesticities / Slavery / Urban economies;
Rural economies / Aristocratic economies : women and family;
Caring for gendered bodies / Byzantine body;
Same-sex possibilities;
Performing courtliness;
Gender and the initial Christianization of northern Europe (to 1000 CE);
gender of the religious : wo/men and the invention of monasticism;
Women and reform in the central middle ages;
Devoted holiness in the lay world;
Cults of saints;
Heresy and gender in the middle ages;
Cultures of devotion;
bride of Christ, the "male woman," and the female reader in late antiquity;
Gender and the medieval millennium;
Gender in the transition to merchant capitalism;
Toward the witch craze;
Towards feminism : Christine de Pizan, female advocacy, and women's textual communities in the late middle ages and beyond;
Judith M. Bennett, Ruth Mazo Karras;
Dyan Elliott Judith R. Baskin Jonathan P. Berkey Amalie Fössel Katharine Park Janet L. Nelson, Alice Rio Carol Lansing Marie A. Kelleher Susan Mosher Stuard Sara McDougall Maryanne Kowaleski Katherine L. French Elisheva Baumgarten Rachel Stone -- Sarah Rees Jones -- Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane -- Sally McKee -- Kathryn Reyerson -- Jane Whittle -- Joanna H. Drell -- Monica H. Green -- Kathryn M. Ringrose -- Helmut Puff -- E. Jane Burns -- Lisa M. Bitel -- Albrecht Diem -- Fiona J. Griffiths -- Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker -- Miri Rubin -- John H. Arnold -- Kathleen Ashley -- Kate Cooper -- Constance H. Berman -- Martha C. Howell -- Laura Stokes -- Roberta L. Krueger.
Pt.I Gendered thinking :
Pt.II Looking through the law :
Pt.III Domestic lives : Pt.IV Land, labor, economy :
Pt.V Bodies, pleasures, desires :
Pt.VI Engendering Christian holiness :
Pt.VII Turning points and places :

"The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe provides a comprehensive overview of the gender rules encountered in Europe in the period between approximately 500 and 1500 C.E. The essays collected in this volume speak to interpretative challenges common to all fields of women's and gender history--that is, how best to uncover the experiences of ordinary people from archives formed mainly by and about elite males, and how to combine social histories of lived experiences with cultural histories of gendered discourses and identities. The collection focuses on Western Europe in the Middle Ages but offers some consideration of medieval Islam and Byzantium, opening these fields for further research. The Handbook is structured into seven sections: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thought; law in theory and practice; domestic life and material culture; labour, land, and economy; bodies and sexualities; gender and holiness; and the interplay of continuity and change throughout the medieval period. This Handbook contains material from some of the foremost scholars in this field, and will not only serve as the major reference text in the area of medieval and gender studies, but will also provide the agenda for future new research"--Publisher description.