Godly grooming: religion, spirituality, and male hair

• Michael Barbezat (Australian Catholic University)
• Carlo Ferrari (University of Pisa)
• Clayton Killion (Saint Louis University)
• Lea Niccolai (University of Cambridge)
• Dawn LaValle Norman (Australian Catholic University)
• Miles Pattenden (Australian Catholic University)
• Patricia Simmons (University of Melbourne, Emerita University of Michigan)
• Hannah Skoda (University of Oxford)
• Jerry Toner (University of Cambridge)

Respondents

• Simon Goldhill (University of Cambridge)
• Mary Harlow (University of Leicester)
• Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London)

Summary

Hair, as a bodily component, is readily changeable and renewable, but also highly visible and confronting, and so it often develops as a potent site of contested meaning. In many cultures, a person’s hair itself, its absence or arrangement, and behaviours surrounding it are key markers of identity variables such as age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, belonging, political association or exclusion – as well as religious affiliation or piety. The challenge for scholars is how to ‘read’ hair in a given context, situating it amongst many potential meanings.

Our workshop aims to advance methodology for such interpretations in historical settings via a focus on the intersections between hair and religion in pre-modern and modern societies, considering how hair and beards acquire religious meaning, and how religious imperatives shaped rituals involving hair (e.g. shaving, adorning, covering up) or the treatment of hair that has been removed from the body (e.g. locks of hair used in magic or as relics).

The event further addresses a specific gap in historiography in which much less attention has been paid to male hair, including beards and body hair, compared to female hair. For men, how to grow, shave, and groom hair are daily choices above and beyond the styling of head hair that can advertise such affiliations and entwine entire identities and ontologies of belief.

Day 1 will see a cross-disciplinary group of international scholars interested in religious history and the moral arguments for different styles of male grooming discuss short pre-circulated papers (ca. 3000 words each) cutting across the key historical periods (antiquity, medieval, and early modern).

Registered participants will be sent a link to access the papers in preparation for the event.

Day 2 will consist of a demonstration in the Cast Gallery of the Classics Faculty dedicated to exploring the many languages of hierarchy that hair has spoken in the Greco-Roman past.

In the exhibition, we will confront head-on the meanings of Greco-Roman hair-styling by cutting and styling the hair and beards of willing volunteers into those sported by elite and lower-class individuals of the Roman empire. Academics from the Godly Grooming project will offer live commentary.

We hope to attract historians of the body, of gender, and of religion working on diverse religious traditions and pre-modern societies.

If you have specific accessibility needs for this event please get in touch. We will do our best to accommodate any requests.

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