Philippa Levine, “’When I feel very near God, I always feel such a need to undress’: Religion, Nakedness and the Body Divine"

Philippa Levine, “’When I feel very near God, I always feel such a need to undress’: Religion, Nakedness and the Body Divine”

Montreal British History Seminar

Thompson House, room 404

Diverse institutions have attempted to order and to organise, to regulate and to banish, to promote and to sell nakedness. Focusing on religion’s always ambivalent relationship with the human body, this talks explores a cultural history with surprisingly powerful contemporary resonance. From biblical texts to controversies over modern representations of Jesus and Mary, religious institutions and believers themselves have struggled with the meanings and the representations of human nakedness, with sometimes surprising outcomes.