Art, media, and fashion: Negotiating queerness and Catholicism through depictions of Saint Sebastian, 15th century to the present
Date
2022-05
Authors
Simon, Joshua Douglas
Major Professor
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Reddy-Best, Kelly L.
Farley Gordon, Jennifer
Schaal, Michèle A.
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Abstract
Queerness and Catholicism have historically been at odds with one another; the Church’s condemnation of queer, trans, and gender non-conforming individuals pervaded for centuries, causing many queer Catholics to prioritize one part of themselves over the other. There has been a slightly higher level of acceptance of queer identities by the Catholic Church in recent years, but the Church’s long and deep-running anti-queer rhetoric still influences its actions and individual practitioners’ lives today, queer or not. Despite this division between queer individuals and the Church, queerness and Catholicism find convergence through depictions of Saint Sebastian. The purpose of this thesis was to examine how and why Sebastian, a Catholic saint, serves as an icon for the queer community, how dress was used in his shifting representations over time, and how these depictions of the Saint emerged in activist-related dress in the 21st century. Through an analysis of works of art including paintings, drawings, sculptures, historic dress, home furnishings, cinema, and music, as well as queer-activist dress of the 21st century and utilizing queer theory to guide my interpretations, I disentangled the meaning present in this imagery of Saint Sebastian and how this interacts with the queer community. Through my study of portrayals of Sebastian, several key themes emerged from the data. Ambivalence in depictions of Saint Sebastian’s fleshy body was apparent, with an emphasis on depicting Sebastian within the context of his executions. A split in time period and artwork design style was observed, with many examples analyzed being from the Renaissance or post-1960s. Several of these contemporary artworks incorporated text reifying sainthood and associated suffering. Further, artworks’ overall composition surrounding Saint Sebastian reinforced sainthood through contextual visual elements. Many contemporary artworks surveyed included overt signifiers of queerness, with minimal references to subtle queerness. From these findings, I interpreted the significance of the imagery observed, as well as drew conclusions regarding Saint Sebastian’s positioning at the conjunction of queerness and Catholicism.
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