12:00 pm | Clark Hall Room 206, 11130 Bellflower Road
Embodiment of paradoxes and prophecies, fragmented by metaphors, the heterogeneous, ever-shifting artifact that is the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, could hardly stand further from the natural world. Late antique and Byzantine authors described her womb was the bush that burns and is not consumed, her body as the throne and the altar of God, and her arms as the liturgical spoon. She is a virgin who lactates. Despite her extraordinary qualities, remote from the experiences of womankind, art historians who have attempted to interpret this last facet of a very complex subject – the nursing Virgin Mary – have commonly essentialized it by presenting modern western constructions of nursing and motherhood as ahistorical, self-evident truths that are realized in this image-type. While scholars in many fields have explored the implications of gender theory for well over two decades, little of this work has been directed at Byzantine, and none at Egyptian Christian, art history. The vast distance that separates women engaging in the biologically natural act of nursing from the social construction of a nursing female cult figure shrinks and even disappears in their writings. Elizabeth Bowman, Elsie B. Smith Professor in the Liberal Arts, was motivated by this historiographic pattern and uses this iconographic type as a vehicle for exploring the variability of assemblages of the Virgin Mary Galaktotrophousa, or ‘she who nourishes with milk,’ and her diverse audiences.
An informal lunch will be provided.
Registration is requested. Register HERE.
