Derek Krueger: “Was Byzantine Christianity Heteronormative?”

Friday, March 27, 2026
12:00 pm – 2:00 pm

832 Schermerhorn Hall

Derek Krueger
University of North Carolina at Greensboro (Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies)

Was Byzantine Christianity Heteronormative?

Abstract
Medieval East Roman Christianity offered alternatives to imperial society’s rigid gender roles and the sexual expectations that came with them. In monasticism, women and men abandoned marriage and procreation to heighten the orientation of their desire toward God and the saints. In some cases, monastic life transcended gender categories and was distinctly queer. Saints’ lives and spiritual instruction in particular, offered fabulations that presented religious life as a refuge from medieval Greek heteronormativities, although often in coded or ambiguous ways.