Prof. Dr. Susanna Elm, University of California, Berkeley;
Prof. Dr. Barbara Vinken, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
The joint conference of LMU Munich and UC Berkeley „Pretty/Ugly“ probes the dynamic and contentious relationship between body, clothes, and religious beliefs and their secularized revenants. What makes dress, clothes, vestments, fashion so powerful? The conference focuses on the up until now underexamined question how clothes and fashion function as representation and mode of access to divine immanence. What is the relation between religious dogma, religious convictions, and matters of the transcendental, divine realm and the seemingly ephemeral phenomenon of clothing? And in what sense does the historical cesura of the French Revolution mark the break between the divine and the beautiful?