Karl Whittington, "Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025)

Karl Whittington, "Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025)

Author: New Books Network June 15, 2026 Duration: 1:26:12
Karl Whittington joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2025). What role does desire play in the making of art objects? Art historians typically answer this question by referring to historical evidence about an artist's sexual identity or to particular kinds of imagery. But what about anonymous artists? Or works whose subject matter is mainstream? We know little about the identities and personalities of most premodern artists, but this should not hold us back from thinking about their embodied experience. In this book, Karl Whittington contends that we can "queer" the works of anonymous makers by thinking about their embodied experiences creating art. Considering issues of touch, pressure, and gesture across substances such as wood, stone, ivory, wax, cloth, paint, and metal, Whittington argues for an erotics of artisanal labor, in which the actions of hand, body, and breath interact in intimate ways with materials. Whittington takes seriously the agency of materials and technical processes, arguing that they necessarily placed the bodies of artists and artisans into physical situations and psychological states that can be read through the lens of desire. Combining historical evidence with speculative description, this evocative set of essays broadens our understanding of the motivations and experiences of premodern artists. It will appeal to scholars and students of art history, medieval studies, gender studies, queer studies, and anthropology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dive into the distant past with New Books in Medieval History, where the latest academic research comes to life through conversation. This podcast, part of the wider New Books Network, functions as an ongoing public lecture series, bringing the authors of groundbreaking monographs directly to your ears. Each episode features an in-depth dialogue between the scholar behind a new book and an informed interviewer, peeling back the layers on topics ranging from daily life and religious practice to warfare, politics, and art across the medieval world. You’ll hear about the process of historical discovery, the debates shaping the field, and the fascinating stories that often lie outside textbook summaries. It’s a chance to sit in on the kind of thoughtful discussion that usually happens in university corridors or after conference panels. By focusing entirely on recently published work, this channel offers a dynamic window into how our understanding of the centuries between antiquity and the Renaissance is continually being refined and challenged. For anyone with a curiosity about the foundations of the modern world, this podcast provides a direct line to the experts who are writing its deepest history. Tune in to explore the complex tapestry of the Middle Ages, one new book at a time.
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