'Born This Way: Lesbian Moroccan Witches and Paré's use of Leo Africanus'

Dr. Emily Cranford, visiting assistant professor of French, will present the Tea Talk "Born This Way: Lesbian Moroccan Witches and Paré's use of Leo Africanus.”

Description: Like hermaphrodites, women with ambiguous genitalia were a frightening specter for early modern French men. Some early modern surgical texts display a reaction to these women’s anatomy in the form of female genital mutilation. Royal surgeon Ambroise Paré in "Of Monsters and Marvels" (1573) justifies this violence as a preclusion of female female sexual acts. 

The Women's & Gender Studies Tea Talks series features faculty, staff and guest speakers on a range of topics. Lectures are free and open to the public.

Dr. Cranford teaches language and advanced literature and culture courses as well as First Year Inquiry and women's and Gender studies. Her research interests include gender and sexuality in early modern France; the intersections of friendship, proto-feminism, and masculinity; monsters, odd bodies, and otherness; and medieval to contemporary writings about plants and animals.