Episode Details

Humors, Horoscopes, and Homosexuality The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 168 with Heather Rose Jones

In this episode we talk about:

• This history of astrological explanations for sexual preference
• The lack of a “unified model of homosexuality”
• The relation of gender and sexual preference under the “one-sex model”
• The basics of humoral theory
• How sex affects humoral balance
• The connections between astrology and humoral theory
• How fiction can use this topic to explore characterization
• Books used
  • Amer, S. 2009. “Medieval Arab Lesbians and 'Lesbian-Like'” in Journal of the History of Sexuality, 18(2), 215-236.
  • Brooten, Bernadette J. 1997. Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism.University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-07591-5
  • Cadden, Joan. 1993. Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-48378-6
  • Decker-Hauff, Hansmartin and Rudolf Seigel (editors). 1967. Die Cronik der Grafen von Zimmern: Handschriften 580 und 581 der Fürstlich Fürstenbergischen Hofbibliothek Donaueschingen. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Konatanz und Stuttgart.
  • Habib, Samar. 2009. Arabo-Islamic Texts on Female Homosexuality: 850-1780 A.D. Teneo Press, Youngstown. ISBN 978-1-934844-11-3
  • Hubbard, Thomas K. 2003. Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 978-0-520-23430-7
  • Laqueur, Thomas. 1990. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-674-54349-1
  • Lemay, Helen Rodnite. 1982. “Human Sexuality in Twelfth- through Fifteenth-Century Scientific Writings” in Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, Vern L. Bullough and James Brundage eds. Prometheus Books, Buffalo. ISBN 0-87975-141-X
  • Nederman, Cary J. and Jacqui True. 1996. “The Third Sex: The Idea of the Hermaphrodite in Twelfth-Century Europe” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 6:4: 497-517.
  • Traub, Valerie. 2002. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-44885-9
  • Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. ISBN 978-0-8265-1750-0
• This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here:
  • Astrological Texts
  • Humoral Theory

A transcript of this podcast is available here.

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: h