This study builds up a source of interdisciplinary information for the study of gender and the body in history. Scholars in the field explore the relation of the body to gender in Greece, Rome and the Near East, arguing that the body is culturally constructed and not a sign of what is natural.

Parchments of Gender builds up an important source of inter-disciplinary information for the study of gender and the body in ancient history. The central and unifying theme is the body's relation to gender. With essays covering the ancient communities of Greece, Rome, and Judaea, the volume argues that the body is culturally constructed and not a sign of what is natural. Ancient bodies are "parchments of gender": textual skins on which gender is inscribed and on which can be traced other interconnecting matrices of knowledge and power that give these bodies their seemingly legible contours. The volume also demonstrates the central role of antiquity in the developing cultural formation of the gendered body as a concept, a practice and an experience in modern societies.