Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy explores the new directions being taken in the study of sex and gender in Italy from 1300-1700 and highlights the impact that recent scholarship has had in revealing innovative ways of approaching this subject.

Chapter 1: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy: Themes and Approaches in Recent Scholarship; Part I: Sex, Order, and Disorder; Chapter 2: The Lord Who Rejected Love, or the Griselda Story (X, 10) Reconsidered Yet Again; Chapter 3: Sexual Violence in the Sienese State Before and After the Fall of the Republic; Chapter 4: In the Neighbourhood: Residence, Community, and the Sex Trade in Early Modern Bologna; Chapter 5: Though Popes Said Don't, Some People Did: Adulteresses in Catholic Reformation Rome; Part II: Sense and Sensuality in Sex and Gender; Chapter 6: "Bodily Things" and Brides of Christ: The Case of the Early Seventeenth-century "Lesbian Nun" Benedetta Carlini; Chapter 7: In Bed with Ludovico Santa Croce (1557); Chapter 8; Aesthetics, Dress, and Militant Masculinity in Castiglione's Courtier; Chapter 9: The Sausage Wars: Or How the Sausage and Carne Battled for Gastronomic and Social Prestige in Renaissance Literature and Culture; Part III: Visualizing Sexuality in Word and Image; Chapter 10: Gianantonio Bazzi, Called "Il Sodoma": Homosexuality in Art, Life, and History; Chapter 11: Vagina Dialogues: Piccolomini's Raffaella and Aretino's Ragionamenti; Chapter 12: Giovan Battista della Porta's Erotomanic Art of Recollection; Chapter 13: "O mie arti fallaci": Tasso's Saintly Women in the Liberata and Conquistata