A cooperation of University of Bonn and University of Vienna
Period Studies is a dynamic field of research that places menstruation at its center. It is shaped by Critical Menstruation Studies, which understands menstruation as a productive lens for examining how power operates through the menstrual cycle and its social meaning for roughly half of the world’s population.
While related conversations often sit in the social sciences, political studies, or medicine, Period Studies takes a distinct approach through the humanities. It works across history, culture, religion, and the arts to explore how menstruation is culturally constructed and contested. It examines how menstruation appears in cultural products and practices, from texts and images to rituals, institutions, and everyday material culture. It also asks how these representations and practices shape understandings of bodies and gender, including the norms, expectations, and ideals of appearance that attach to them. By tracing continuities as well as change, Period Studies foregrounds the long histories that structure menstrual meanings and lived experience in the present.
We are happy to announce that Kulturhistorische Menstruationsforschungen: Perspektiven aus den Period Studies is under contract with De Gruyter. In recent years, international research on menstruation as a biological, cultural, and social phenomenon has steadily developed in the fields of anthropology, sociology, law, and gender and queer studies. Nevertheless, the socio-historical, cultural, and literary fields…
Oltre i tabù: Contro-narrazioni sovversive del ciclo mestruale dagli anni Sessanta a oggi Breaking taboos surrounding the menstrual cycle is a recurring theme in articles and contributions published over the past decade, indicative of the progressive cultural shift emerging in various fields (marketing, politics, publishing, etc.). This volume offers a reading of Italian works, primarily…
Welcome to the website of the Platform for Period Studies, a cooperation of Kerstin Mayerhofer and Lisa Tenderini. This platform is dedicated to the study of the menstrual cycle in cultural and religious history, and its multifaceted representation in literature, art and material culture. The website provides details about ongoing projects including related publications and…