Wandering Genitalia: Sexuality & the Body in German Culture between the Late Middle Ages & Early Modernity (2009)

This publication is my first foray into research about medieval badges. At the time I was writing and researching a book about obscenity in medieval German literature (never completed). I found that I wanted to understand better these strange and wonderful objects whose symbology resonated with a few late German texts, and that to do so I would need to study them as part of the larger category of objects to which they belong: small, mass-produced, cheap, wearable signs featuring a familiar image (familiar to a medieval audience at least). I became a student again, learning new ways to think about material culture and artifacts from archaeologists and art historians, and eventually I published Medieval Badges: Their Wearers and Their Worlds (2021). In hindsight I can see that “Wandering Genitalia” was a major turning point in my research career.

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Courtesy of King’s College London.

Recommended Bibliography Citation:

Rasmussen, Ann Marie. Wandering Genitalia: Sexuality & the Body in German Culture between the Late Middle Ages & Early Modernity. (London:King’s College London, 2009), (30 pages).