| List of illustrations | page vii | |||
| List of contributors | ix | |||
| Acknowledgements | x | |||
| List of abbreviations | xi | |||
| 1 | Introduction: gendering the early medieval world | 1 | ||
| Julia M. H. Smith | ||||
| PART I GENDER IN LATE ANTIQUE, BYZANTINE AND ISLAMIC SOCIETIES | ||||
| 2 | Gender and ethnicity in the early Middle Ages | 23 | ||
| Walter Pohl | ||||
| 3 | Clothes maketh the man: power dressing and elite masculinity in the later Roman world | 44 | ||
| Mary Harlow | ||||
| 4 | Social transformation, gender transformation? The court eunuch, 300–900 | 70 | ||
| Shaun Tougher | ||||
| 5 | Sex, lies and textuality: the Secret History of Prokopios and the rhetoric of gender in sixth-century Byzantium | 83 | ||
| Leslie Brubaker | ||||
| 6 | Romance and reality in the Byzantine bride shows | 102 | ||
| Martha Vinson | ||||
| 7 | Men, women and slaves in Abbasid society | 121 | ||
| Julia Bray | ||||
| 8 | Gender and politics in the harem of al-Muqtadir | 147 | ||
| Nadia Maria El Cheikh | ||||
| PART II GENDER IN GERMANIC SOCIETIES | ||||
| 9 | Dressing conservatively: women’s brooches as markers of ethnic identity? | 165 | ||
| Bonnie Effros | ||||
| 10 | Gendering courts in the early medieval west | 185 | ||
| Janet L. Nelson | ||||
| 11 | Men, women and liturgical practice in the early medieval west | 198 | ||
| Gisela Muschiol | ||||
| 12 | Gender and the patronage of culture in Merovingian Gaul | 217 | ||
| Yitzhak Hen | ||||
| 13 | Genealogy defined by women: the case of the Pippinids | 234 | ||
| Ian Wood | ||||
| 14 | Bride shows revisited: praise, slander and exegesis in the reign of the empress Judith | 257 | ||
| Mayke de Jong | ||||
| 15 | ‘What is the Word if not semen?’ Priestly bodies in Carolingian exegesis | 278 | ||
| Lynda Coon | ||||
| 16 | Negotiating gender, family and status in Anglo-Saxon burial practices, c. 600–950 | 301 | ||
| Dawn Hadley | ||||
| Index | 324 | |||