Undergraduate Course: The Body Beloved: Sexuality and Desire in Medieval Art (HIAR10218)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course is about the representation of love in the European Middle Ages. Through exploring art, visual and material culture, this class will consider critical interventions in premodern art histories of sexuality and gender. We will analyse textiles representing love stories, objects of courtship and manuscript illuminations of the naked human figure. Working from feminist, queer and trans studies informed approaches to the body, we will consider how art historians write about subjectivity and desire. |
| Course description |
How were artists in the Middle Ages exploring nuanced ideas about the human body and sexuality? What did it mean to make art about falling in love? And how was visual culture both constructing and subverting a developing gender binary? Building on Micheal Camille's field-defining queer premodern art history to on-going feminist interventions and work by art historians of trans studies, we will consider the artistic subjects and objects of desire before modernity. Topics covered may include consent and its violation, love stories like Tristan and Isolde, queer women's art histories, representing the naked/nude body, critically engaged histories of masculinity and femininity, the role of desire in mysticism, and the diverse arts of courtly love.
Taught across ten weekly two-hour seminars, students will read excerpts of primary sources such as Medieval love stories alongside interdisciplinary scholarship. Foundational texts about the historical, cultural and artistic developments of the Middle Ages will offer a basis from which to ask questions informed by gender studies about agency, the gaze and bodily autonomy. Readings centre on pressing methodological, theoretical and contextual questions about how gender and sexuality are represented in art and written about by art historians. Students will engage with University and local collection holdings. Students will utilise this training in both contemporary theory and premodern artistic context to pursue research about an artwork of their choice related to themes of the course.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | This Course does not require any additional costs to be met by the Student. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have completed at least 3 History of Art courses at grade B or above, and we will only consider University/College level courses. **Please note that 4th year History of Art courses are high-demand, meaning that they have a very high number of students wishing to enrol in a very limited number of spaces. These enrolments are managed strictly by the Visiting Student Office, in line with the quotas allocated by the department, and all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
| Course Start Date |
12/01/2026 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 9,
External Visit Hours 1,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 1,
Summative Assessment Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
173 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
This course has 2 summative assessment components.
1. Writing Portfolio, 1,600-words (comprising one 800-word visual analysis and one 800-word critical reading response), 40%, due in Weeks 3-5. The Portfolio relates to Learning Outcomes 1 and 2.
2. Essay, 3,000-words, 60%, due in exam period. The Essay relates to Learning Outcomes 1-5.
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| Feedback |
FORMATIVE FEEDBACK:
Students have two opportunities for formative feedback in this course. Each of these opportunities for ungraded feedback concretely aids in preparing students for their summative assignments.
1. A short, spoken presentation supported by engagement with secondary academic texts and visual materials delivered once during the term. This presentation helps students engage with key course materials that will ultimately underpin any final summative research essay. Spoken feedback will be given in class in response to student presentations with an optional opportunity to meet one on one with the course organizer for further spoken feedback.
2. An essay plan due in Weeks 6-8. This essay plan comprises of a key object, a summary of research questions, and a draft bibliography helping the student asses their own research process for the summative essay. Spoken feedback on the essay plan will be delivered in a one-on-one meeting with the course organizer within one week of submission.
There will be opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback within seminar discussion of final essay projects.
SUMMATIVE FEEDBACK
Summative Feedback for both graded assessments will be delivered in writing by the course instructor.
Feedback on the first summative assessment will help students develop their skills of visual analysis and critical assessment of secondary academic texts. Insights they gain from this work can be applied to the communication of their own research work across the rest of the course. These two specific skills are foundational for their second summative assessment.
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| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the representation of human sexuality in Medieval art including queer and trans subjects
- Critically engage with current debates in the field of premodern gender and sexuality studies.
- Analyse key primary sources from the European Middle Ages related to gender, love, desire and sexuality.
- Show through the analysis of art how orientations towards human sexuality and gender identity are historically and culturally contingent and change over time.
- Critically consider how art historians address homophobia, transphobia and other forms of gender and sexuality-based discrimination in past and in present research.
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Reading List
Camille, Michael. The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire. Harry N. Abrams, 1998.
DeVun, Leah. The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press, 2021.
Heng, Geraldine. Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy. Columbia University Press, 2003.
Mills, Robert. Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages. University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Spencer-Hall, Alicia, and Blacke Gutt, eds. Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography. Amsterdam University Press, 2021.
Thebaut, Nancy, and Melanie Holcomb. Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2025. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Research and Enquiry: An independent research essay (the final summative assessment) enables students to develop their skills at gathering, evaluating and interpreting primary visual and textual knowledge. In class discussion, close reading and formative assessments aid students in developing precise and applicable research skills for use on topics that are important to them beyond the classroom. Students are mentored through the full arc of the research process from developing their enquiry to seeking out appropriate resources to evaluating evidence from primary and secondary sources. Building confidence in this process in the classroom sets students up for applying critical research skills outside of the classroom.
Personal and Intellectual Autonomy: Discussion-based seminars encourage students to practice, refine, and express independent thinking. Students will openly reflect on the stakes of their chosen research enquiry for diversifying the ways we write histories of sexuality in discussion and peer-to-peer review.
Skilled Communication: Students develop communication skills through both oral presentations (formative) and written (summative) assessments practicing distilling and communicating complex information in both oral and written formats. In their first summative assessment, students learn to evaluate how an author of a critically acclaimed academic text communicates their argument and uses supporting evidence. The ability to evaluate an argument and different kinds of evidence is a key skill students will utilize beyond university. |
| Keywords | Gender,sexuality,queer,medieval art,history of the body |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Jess Bailey
Tel:
Email: |
Course secretary | |
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