Women and Modesty in Late Antiquity

Kate Wilkinson is an Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Towson State University, Maryland and director of the graduate program in Women's and Gender Studies. Her research combines interests in early Christian asceticism, social history, and theology with feminist theory and feminist ethnography.

'Wilkinson's candor is here is both refreshing and a touch subversive, a tip of the hat to her resistance, even in the face of self-disclosure, to her work's easy categorization. Sitting self-consciously at the intersection of late ancient studies and historical theology, feminist methodology and inquiries into traditionally anti-feminist subject matters, Women and Modesty in Late Antiquity is part delightful provocation, part apt foray into a new era of scholarship, one committed to blurred boundaries and liminal spaces, without compromising literary, linguistic, and historical rigor. That is, surely, a high aim for any scholar's first monograph, and happily it is not beyond the book's reach. As such, I commend it to readers interested in the lives and practices of late ancient women with wholly immodest enthusiasm.' Maria Doerfler, Marginalia

• 1. Spectacular modesty; 2. Apparel, identity, and agency: Demetrias dresses herself; 3. Publicity and domesticity; 4. The modest mouth; 5. Performance anxiety: hypocrisy and sincerity in the performance of modesty; 6. Modest agencies; Conclusion.