CANCELLED Lunch & Learn: Sexy Nun Music
The Sacred Erotic in 17 Century Italian Convent Performance
Wednesday, August 2, 2023 · 12 - 1 PM
Virtual
Due to a family emergency, this event has been rescheduled for Winter Session 2024. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
In the wake of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, the Roman Catholic Church launched a massive propaganda campaign to draw back as many of its former followers as possible. The Church encouraged renewed focus on the soul’s potential for union with the divine, and as a result, mystics, poets, artists, and musicians across Europe immersed themselves in eroticizing depictions of the soul merging with God. In this talk, Dr. Johnson will introduce how gestures towards divine ecstasy could manifest, using examples from literature and the visual arts throughout Europe, before focusing on musical evocations of the sacred erotic in 17th-century compositions by Italian nuns.
Bio:
Lindsay Johnson is Senior Lecturer in Music and Affiliate Faculty in GWST. Her primary research focuses on seventeenth-century Italian nuns and their music through the lens of sacred eroticism and performed embodiment. Secondary interests include US American music of the 1960s and 1970s and its ties to sexuality, race, and politics. More broadly, her research explores issues of gender and sexuality, the performing voice and body, and the experience of the listener.