Early Christian dress
Subtitle: gender, virtue, and authority
By: Kristi Upson-Saia
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Routledge studies in ancient history -- 3
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 171
ISBN-13: 9780415890014; 9780203806456
Subjects: Sex role; Women in Christianity; Clothing and dress; Christianity; History
Other titles: Gender, virtue, and authority
Description: Early Christian Dress is the first full-length monograph on the subject of dress in early Christianity. It pays attention to the ways in which dress expressed and shaped Christian identity, the role dress played in Christians' rivalries with pagan neighbours, and especially to the ways in which notions of gender were culled and revised in the process. Although many scholars have argued that gender in late antiquity was a performed and embodied category, few have paid attention to the ways in which dress and physical appearances were implicated in the understanding of femininity and masculinity. This study addresses that gap, revealing the amount of sartorial work necessary to secure stable gender categories in the worlds of early Imperial pagans and late ancient Christians.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Elite Roman women's dress in the early Imperial period; title: Scripting Christians' clothing and grooming; title: Performance anxiety : dress and gender crises in early Christian asceticism; title: Narrating cross-dressing in female saints' lives.