Margaret Miles, one of America's leading scholars of religion and the body in late antiquity and medieval Europe, will present an illustrated lecture on "Achieving the Christian Body: Visual Incentives to Imitation of Christ in the 14th-15th Centuries" on Monday, April 9, at 7:30 p.m. in Eaton Humanities room 150 at the University of ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ at Boulder.
Miles is dean, academic vice president and Dillenberger Professor of Historical Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.
The event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow in room 350.
According to Deborah Haynes, chair of the ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥-Boulder fine arts department, Miles explores five interrelated themes in historical Christianity and in contemporary culture: representation of the body and values about embodiment and carnal existence; the representation of women and the way gender issues are expressed in images; the nature of bodily and visual pleasure and delight; the role and function of beauty in human life; and cultivating moral responsibility for what we see and how we live, especially as this relates to valuing differences.
"More than anything else, her writing contains sustained reflection about how we should live," Haynes said.
Her books include "Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West," "Desire and Delight: A New Reading of Augustine's Confessions," "Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture" and "Plotinus on Body and Beauty: Society, Philosophy and Religion in Third Century Rome."
The Miles lecture is sponsored by the departments of fine arts and religious studies with support from the Graduate Committee on the Humanities.
For more information contact Haynes at (303) 492-3577) or Fred Denny, chair of religious studies, at (303) 492-6358.