History of Virginity Subject of Talk at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Kathleen Kelly, professor of English and director of the Writing Programs at Northeastern University, will give an illustrated talk titled “Virginity: A Brief History” on Oct. 23 at 5 p.m. in Rehm Library. The talk is free and open to the public.

To say that virginity has a history is to argue that virginity is dependent upon cultural, not physiological, criteria. Such a history can be traced from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the early modern period across a number of different discourses: medical and scientific treatises, patristic writings and the medieval commentaries on them, legal records and documents, and literary texts. In most cases, discussions of virginity focus on attempting to ascertain female virginity; the female body, it was (and is) anxiously hoped, must yield up its secrets to empirical investigation and study — or if science fails, to magic.

Kelly is the author of Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance co-edited with Marina Leslie (University of Delaware Press, 1999), and Performing Virginity and Chastity in the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2000).

The event is sponsored by the English department, Center for Interdisciplinary and Special Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies.