Rosenberg’s book sets out to examine rabbinic paradigms of how virgin women’s bodies work, how the loss of that virginity happens, and therefore, what evidence proves the existence of virginity. This book forms a new entry into the subfield of gender studies within rabbinics, as well as the new and growing interest in modern takes on the study of virginity in Late Antique Judaism and Christianity. In the present study, Rosenberg examines what has been considered proof of virginity in Jewish and later Christian cultures, and the ways male sexual behavior is incentivized to provide those proofs. However, this book is unusual among its peers in focusing, despite its titular emphasis on the verification of female virginity, not on the representation of virginity itself, but rather on how various paradigms of virginity shape masculinity and male sexual behavior.For the full publication details of this new book from OUP, see here.
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