Sonia Velázquez presented her forthcoming book, Promiscuous Grace: Imagining Beauty and Holiness with Saint Mary of Egypt, in conversation with Prof. Clémence Boulouque (Religious Studies, Columbia University). Examining images of Saint Mary of Egypt by seventeenth-century painter Jusepe de Ribera, Velázquez argued for the importance of the saint in challenging conventional ideas of beauty and holiness, especially when concerning female bodies. Mary the Egyptian emerges thus as an early example of a “nasty woman,” as Prof. Boulouque put it.
The College of Arts