Includes bibliographical references and index.

Gender reversals and gender cultures (an introduction), Sabrina Petra Ramet; traversing gender - cultural context and gender practices, Anne Bolin; gender, gender roles, gender role reversals, Judith Ochshorn; cross dressing and cross purposes - gender possibilities in the acts of Thecla, J.L. Welch; martyrs, ascetics and gnostics - gender crossing in early Christianity, Karen Jo Torjensen; cross dressing, gender errors and sexual taboos in Renaissance literature, Winfred Schleiner; Elena alias Eleno - genders, sexualities, and "race" in the mirror of natural history in 16th-century Spain, Israel Burshatin; becoming male - salvation through gender modification in Hinduism and Buddhism, Cynthia Ann Humes; gender, power and spectacle in late-imperial Chinese theatre, Sophie Volpp; eroticism, sexuality and gender revearsal in Hungarian culture, Laszlo Kurti; sacred genders in Siberia - shamans, bear festivals and androgyny, Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer ; there is more than Just women and men - gender variance in North American Indian cultures, Sabine Lang; the procreactive and ritual constitution of female, male, and other - androgynous beings in the cultural imagination of the Bimin-Kuskusmin of Papua New Guinea, Fitz John Porter Poole.