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New Harvard class will study 'genderless angels' and 'trans monks' - as part of $60,000-per-year degree
A new course at Harvard will revisit the Byzantine Empire with a focus on medieval gender identity, promising to cover 'genderless angels' and 'trans monks.'
The Fall 2024 class, called Gender in Byzantium, is said to explore 'the entire spectrum of binary and non-binary conceptualizations, representations and performances of gender in Byzantium' that reigned from 476 to 1400 AD.
The university, which costs $60,000 a year, plans to cover text and art on medieval eunuchs, men who were castrated, teaching them as a possible 'third gender.'
It will also explore the history of women who disguised their sex to join monasteries, describing them as transgender.
But word of the course is already provoking controversy, with critics claiming that the course promotes a 'woke' political agenda by 'making up history.'
The dust-up follows a punishing year of similar accusations for the elite school, which was ranked the worst school for free speech in the United States in 2023 by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
A course at Harvard this fall will revisit the Byzantine Empire with a focus on medieval gender identity, promising to cover 'genderless angels' and 'trans monks.' Above, freshly mowed community space at the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts
In addition to angelic beings, the course will cover medieval eunuchs, born-male but castrated members of Byzantine royal courts, as a possible 'third gender.' Above, angels depicted in an early piece of Byzantine art - the 6th century Apse mosaic in Basilica of San Vitale
The Byzantine Empire was the successor to the Roman Empire and inaugurated by the first Christian Roman Emperor Constantine I in 330 AD.
Constantine I also legalized Christianity, which had previously been persecuted in the Roman Empire, making the religion a major element of the culture.
The Harvard course will use 'textual and visual material alongside recent scholarship on gender and sexuality' from the empire for its teachings, according to the syllabus.
The topics said to be discussed will also include 'normative concepts and representations of masculinity and femininity,' 'same-sex desire and relationships (homosociality)' and 'cross-dressing (trans monks?)'
'They made up enough fake genders, might as well make up history as well,' a person shared on X following news of the course.
The class will also examine the gender identities of supernatural beings depicted in theological or religious texts, 'incorporeal/genderless angels,' Harvard's course description continued.
News of the course has provoked heated and dismissive responses from culture warriors since Tuesday, when Campus Reform, a project of the conservative nonprofit the Leadership Institute, first wrote about the class.
'They made up enough fake genders,' one user of Elon Musk 's social site X posted, 'might as well make up history as well' (above)
'Just read Satyricon to get your jollies and move on to actual history,' one X user posted in criticism of the course.
The Satyricon, written in Latin several centuries before the rise of the Byzantine Empire in the 1st century AD, is considered an early and classic example of parodic literature for its ironic depiction of sexual mores, decadence and the style of romantic writing in ancient Greece and Rome.
One of the assigned texts for Harvard's 'Gender in Byzantium' class, titled 'Byzantine Intersectionality,' casts the 5th century Catholic saint Marina the Monk as a transgender person.
'[S]cholars repeatedly have shied away from referring to these figures as "transgender," instead calling them "transvestite nuns," "cross-dressing" saints, or women in "disguise,"' the assigned class text reads.
'These pejorative terms, which are pervasive throughout the historiography, negate these subjects' identification as transgender persons,' the text states.
Also, known as Marinos, Pelagia and Mary of Alexandria, this historical figure is also honored by the Arabic Druze and the Eastern Orthodox Churches for a life of monastic worship in modern day Lebanon.
DailyMail.com has reached out for comment to Harvard's Medieval Studies department, which is offering the course to undergraduate students.
Harvard's bottom-most ranking of on campus on free speech, according to FIRE, was calculated based on factors like the strength of its policies protecting free speech — as well as how many professors, students and visitors to campus have been targeted by the school for their publicly held political beliefs.
Harvard's woke wars have been at their most heated over the bloody conflict in Gaza. Above, a recent protest encampment at Harvard University is shown
In the last five years, some of Harvard's free speech incidents have included its decision to revoke conservative activist Kyle Kashuv's acceptance because of racist comments he made on social media as a 16-year-old, for which he apologized.
Since 2019, Harvard has sanctioned four scholars, and three of those saw the institution terminate their employment, according FIRE.
Harvard's woke wars have been at their most heated over the bloody conflict in Gaza, which has seen the International Criminal Court issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and three Hamas leaders: Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh.
Outrage over Harvard President Claudine Gay's handling of pro-Palestine student protestors, made worse by 'anti-woke' criticism and a plagiarism scandal, hastened the university leader's resignation late last year.