In this pioneering book, Eve Levin explores sexual behavior among the peoples of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Russia from their conversion to Christianity in the ninth and tenth centuries until the end of the seventeenth century. By ranging across all these societies, Levin is able to fulfill three basic aims: to delineate the general character of sexuality among the Orthodox Slavs, to enrich that account by drawing our attention to regional variations in the sexual mores of these peoples, and to draw suggestive comparisons between the world of the medieval Orthodox Slavs and their contemporaries in the Latin West. Levin begins with a study of the ecclesiastical image of sexuality as expressed in didactic and literary texts, showing that the Orthodox Church was deeply suspicious of sexuality. Her second chapter, on canon law and marfiage, examines the conditions for marriage, divorce, and remarriage, the obligation of the conjugal relationship, and the impact of these rules on social order. Levin looks at church regulations concerning sexual relations among relatives by blood, marriage, spiritual kinship, and adoption in Chapter Three, and she devotes Chapter Four to prohibited sexual practices, both inside and outside of marriage. In the fifth chapter she studies Russian and South Slavic responses to rape, and demonstrates that these societies simultaneously censured violence against women and sanctioned the attitudes and social structures that justified it. Chapter Six deals with the rules on sexual conduct for the clergy, whose job it was to enforce sexual precepts. Throughout her work, Levin argues that, despite its conviction that sexual expression was diabolical, the medieval Orthodox Church approached sexual matters in a surprisingly practical way; its official sexual ethic corresponded to a great degree with popular views. Historians of the Slavic world, both medieval and modern, will welcome this accessible study. It should also attract comparativists who work in such fields as church history, the history of women and the family, and the history of sexuality.

Sex is a difficult issue for contemporary Christians, but the past decade has witnessed a newfound openness regarding the topic among Eastern Orthodox Christians. Both the theological trajectory and the historical circumstances of the Orthodox Church differ radically from those of other Christian denominations that have already developed robust and creative reflections on sexuality and sexual diversity. Within its unique history, theology, and tradition, Orthodox Christianity holds rich resources for engaging challenging questions of sexuality in new and responsive ways. What is at stake in questions of sexuality in the Orthodox tradition? What sources and theological convictions can uniquely shape Orthodox understandings of sexuality? This volume aims to create an agora for discussing sex, and not least the sexualities that are often thought of as untraditional in Orthodox contexts. Through fifteen distinct chapters, written by leading scholars and theologians, this book offers a developed treatment of sexuality in the Orthodox Christian world by approaching the subject from scriptural, patristic, theological, historical, and sociological perspectives. Chapters devoted to practical and pastoral insights, as well as reflections on specific cultural contexts, engage the human realities of sexual diversity and Christian life. From re-thinking scripture to developing theologies of sex, from eschatological views of eros to re-evaluations of the Orthodox responses to science, this book offers new thinking on pressing, present-day issues and initiates conversations about homosexuality and sexual diversity within Orthodox Christianity.

In the world of early Byzantine Christianity, monastic rules acknowledged but discouraged the homosexual impulses of adult males. What most disturbed monastic leaders was adolescent males being accepted as novices; adult men were considered unable to control their sexual desires for these "beautiful boys." John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople (397-407), virulently denounced homosexuality, but was virtually the only Byzantine cleric to do so. Penances traditionally attached to heterosexual sins--including remarriage after divorce or widowhood--have always been much more severe than those for a variety of homosexual acts or relationships. Just as Byzantine churches have found ways to accommodate sequential marriages and other behavior once stridently condemned, this book argues, it is possible for Byzantine Christianity to make pastoral accommodations for gay relationships and same-sex marriage.

Now in its third edition, this leading reader has been updated to make it even more relevant to the study of contemporary Latin America. This edition includes an entirely new chapter, 'The New Left Turn,' and the globalization chapter has been thoroughly revised to reflect the rapid pace of change over the past five years. The book continues to offer a rich variety of materials that can be tailored to the needs of individual instructors. The reader's unique and successful chapter organization provides a thematic complement to narrative accounts of modern Latin American history. By focusing each chapter on a single concept or interpretive 'problem'-such as nationalism, women's rights, or social revolution-the text engages students in the analysis of historical sources and, at the same time, introduces them to the twists and turns of historiography. In addition, the book includes several 'reading images' sections that call on students to evaluate visual materials. With its innovative combination of primary and secondary sources and editorial analysis, this text is designed specifically to stimulate critical thinking in a wide range of courses on Latin American history since independence.

The crime of rape has been prevalent in all contexts, whether committed during armed conflict or in peacetime, and has largely been characterised by a culture of impunity. International law, through its branches of international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law, has increasingly condemned such violence and is progressively obliging states to prevent rape, whether committed by a state agent or a private actor.

This compelling set of essays presents richly human stories of individual and group experiences, as well as of key events in the history of Imperial Russia. Beginning with Peter I's dress reforms in the early eighteenth century and concluding with poets arising out of a stratified and largely urban working class between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the essays introduce readers to many of the major changes in Imperial Russian history and their consequences. We see the effects of reforms; the consequences of an economy and society built on serfdom; as well as the development of a civil society, the "woman question," urbanization, secularization, and modernity. At the same time, the contributors' nuanced reconstruction of personal and group histories provides important correctives to the traditional grand narratives of Russian history. These microhistories reveal individuals' daily negotiations with authority figures, be they government officials, religious leaders, individuals of another class, or even members of their own class. As this book vividly shows, individuals, groups, and events raised out of obscurity remind us of the messiness of everyday life; of people's dreams, frustrations, and transformations; as well as of their sense of self and the community around them. Contributions by: Rodney D. Bohac, Barbara Alpern Engel, ChaeRan Y. Freeze, William B. Husband, Laura L. Phillips, David L. Ransel, Christine Ruane, Rochelle G. Ruthchild, Rebecca Spagnolo, Mark D. Steinberg, Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, and Christine D. Worobec

A pathbreaking "gastrocritical" approach to the poetics of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and their contemporaries