Visual habits nuns, feminism, and American postwar popular culture / Rebecca Sullivan.

Includes bibliographies and index.

"The 1950s and 1960s were times of extraordinary social and political change that redrew the boundaries between traditional and progressive, conservative and liberal. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the history of Catholic nuns. During these two decades, nuns boldly experimented with their role in the church, removing their habits, rejecting the cloister, and fighting for social justice. The media quickly took to their cause and dubbed them 'the new nuns, ' modem exemplars of liberated but sexually contained womanhood." "With Visual Habits, Rebecca Sullivan brings this unexamined history of nuns to the fore, revisiting the intersection of three distinct movements - the Second Vatican Council, the second wave of feminism, and the sexual revolution - to explore the pivotal role nuns played in revamping cultural expectations of femininity and feminism." "From The Nun's Story to The Flying Nun to The Singing Nun, nuns were a major presence in mainstream media and culture. Charting their evolving representation in film and television, popular music, magazines, and girls' literature, Sullivan discusses these images in the context of the period's seemingly unlimited potential for social change. In the process, she delivers a rich cultural analysis of a topic too long ignored."--Jacket.

Introduction : gender, religion, and culture -- 1. Cracks in the cloister : the changing cultural role of nuns -- 2. Celluloid sisters : nuns in Hollywood -- 3. Whose story is The nun's story? -- 4. Adventurous souls : vocation books and postwar girl culture -- 5. Sing out, sister! : sacred music and the feminized folk scene -- 6. Gidget joins a convent : television confronts the new nuns -- Conclusion : the return of the new nuns.

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