ARCHAEOLOGY LECTURE VIRGIN MARY

June 15, 7:30pm - 8:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Art Auditorium Art BuildingTHE NURSING VIRGIN MARY IN ANCIENT EGYPT

THE NURSING VIRGIN MARY IN ANCIENT EGYPT Liquid Flesh and the Medicine of Immortality: Elizabeth Bolman, Ph.D. Professor of Art, Case Western Reserve University The Christian Virgin Mary, Mother of God, could hardly stand further from the natural world. Medieval Eastern Mediterranean authors described her womb as 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 experience of mortal women, art historians who have attempted to interpret representations of the nursing Mother of God and Christ child have commonly universalized the subject. They have used modern western constructions of nursing and motherhood as if they were ahistorical, self-evident truths that are realized in this image-type. A vast distance separates women engaging in the biologically natural act of nursing from the social construction of a nursing female cult figure. This lecture explores issues of gender, sexuality, mother-and-child bonding, salvation, rituals and image-making focused on the depictions of the nursing Virgin Mary in Egypt.


Ticket Information
free

Event Sponsor
RLAC, Mānoa Campus

More Information
ROBERT J LITTMAN, 8082268518, littman@hawaii.edu

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