Ingrid Bergman's engaging screen performance as Sister Mary Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary's made the film nun a star and her character a shining standard of comparison. She represented the religious life as the happy and rewarding choice of a modern woman who had a "complete understanding" of both erotic and spiritual desire. How did this vibrant and mature nun figure come to be viewed as girlish and naive? Why have she and her cinematic sisters in postwar popular film so often been stereotyped or selectively analyzed, so seldom been seen as women and religious? In Veiled Desires--a unique full-length, in-depth study of nuns in film--Maureen Sabine explores these questions in a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study covering more than sixty years of cinema. She looks at an impressive breadth of films in which the nun features as an ardent lead character, including The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Black Narcissus (1947), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Sea Wife (1957), The Nun's Story (1959), The Sound of Music (1965), Change of Habit (1969), In This House of Brede (1975), Agnes of God (1985), Dead Man Walking (1995), and Doubt (2008). Veiled Desires considers how the beautiful and charismatic stars who play chaste nuns, from Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn to Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep, call attention to desires that the veil concealed and the habit was thought to stifle. In a theologically and psychoanalytically informed argument, Sabine responds to the critics who have pigeonholed the film nun as the obedient daughter and religious handmaiden of a patriarchal church, and the respectful audience who revered her as an icon of spiritual perfection. She provides a framework for a more complex and holistic picture of nuns on screen by showing how the films dramatize these women's Christian call to serve, sacrifice, and dedicate themselves to God, and their erotic desire for intimacy, agency, achievement, and fulfillment.

Tracy MacNish's deeply romantic sequel new novel reveals the untapped power of a woman's heart--and how fiercely she dares to protect it. . . Emeline's entire life is controlled by men. She's just been won in a wager by Jeffrey, the Duke of Eton, who keeps her under lock and key. And her cruel stepfather, Simon, wants nothing more than to dominate her entire future. What she wants is a man who'll set her free . . . and Rogan Mullen, heir to the dukedom, just may be the answer to her dreams . . . Rogan is more than eager to have Emeline in his care, but his urge to protect her grows into a yearning to possess her--body and soul. Surrendering completely to love, they cannot foresee that something very sinister threatens to destroy them, for Simon will stop at nothing to control his stepdaughter's fate . . . and only the most fervent passion can endure against such relentless odds . . . "A lushly written, richly detailed Georgian historical [that] pushes the boundaries of the genre."--Booklist

In this evocative, wildly romantic new novel set in Venice and London, Tracy MacNish follows one woman's journey from vengeance to extraordinary passion. . . Three years ago, Kieran Mullen was a carefree, confident beauty. One fateful night, everything changed, and she became solitary and aloof, reluctant to leave her London home even when her brother, Rogan, insists she accompany him on holiday to Venice. There, amid the wild revelries of Carnivale, Kieran is attacked by a masked villain and rescued by a charismatic stranger who offers the one thing that might free her from her haunting past: revenge. . . Matteo de Gama is a study in contradiction--a gambler and a philosopher, a reckless libertine and a most unlikely savior. When he pulls Kieran from a canal's watery depths and learns her secrets, he resolves to help her exact justice. But soon he has another mission in mind--to release the unmistakable fire buried beneath her icy beauty, and teach her the bliss that comes with trusting in her own desires, and in their fierce, abiding love. . . "A lushly written, richly detailed Georgian historical [that] pushes the boundaries of the genre with a story of love, revenge, jealousy, and secrets. . .compelling." --Booklist "This is neo old-school romance done well. . .this book was a treat to read. It was like drinking fine brandy after having had nothing but weak tea. MacNish has a strong and distinctive style." --All About Romance.com "Excellent. . .phenomenal." --The Romance Reader.com "There's nothing veiled about the emotional power and dark sensuality of MacNish's sequel to Veiled Promises. With strong characters playing out a plot that delves into the deepest parts of the human soul, this is a tale to keep you riveted." --Romantic Times "Another delectably intense and edgy tale of passion and peril, revenge and romance." --Booklist "Memorable characters and strong emotions take center stage in a powerful love story that digs deeply into character motivation." --Kathe Robin, Romantic Times

Some risks are worth taking-

In Lifting the Veil of Duality, best-selling author Andreas Moritz poignantly exposes the illusion of duality - good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark. He outlines a simple way to remove every limitation that you have imposed upon yourself in the course of living duality. You will be prompted to see yourself and the world through a new lens - the lens of clarity, discernment and non-judgment. And you are about to find out why mistakes, deception, dishonesty, pain, diseases, accidents, injustice, wars, crime and terrorism all have a deeper purpose and meaning in the larger scheme of things. Lifting the Veil of Duality shows you how you create or subdue the ability to materialize your desires. Other topics include the mystery of time, the truth and illusion of reincarnation, the misleading value of prayer, what makes relationships work and why so often they don't. Find out why injustice is an illusion that has managed to haunt us throughout the ages, and what you can do free yourself from its hold on you. Learn about the Great Separation, the angels amongst us, our light-bodies, why God lives within us and you are God also, and how you can heal yourself at a moment's notice. Read about the "New Medicine" and the destiny of the old medicine, the old economy, the old religion and the old world. Andreas Moritz is a Medical Intuitive and practitioner of Ayurveda, Iridology, Shiatsu and Vibrational Medicine. Author of The Amazing Liver & Gallbladder Flush, Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation, Lifting the Veil of Duality and It's Time to Come Alive. Founder of the innovative healing systems, Ener-Chi Art and Sacred Santèmony - Divine Chanting for Every Occasion.

Veiled women in the West appear menacing. Their visible invisibility is a cause of obsession. What is beneath the veil more than a woman? This book investigates the preoccupation with the veiled body through the imaging and imagining of Muslim women. It examines the relationship between the body and knowledge through the politics of freedom as grounded in a ‘natural’ body, in the index of flesh. The impulse to unveil is more than a desire to free the Muslim woman. What lies at the heart of the fantasy of saving the Muslim woman is the West’s desire to save itself. The preoccupation with the veiled woman is a defense that preserves neither the object of orientalism nor the difference embodied in women’s bodies, but inversely, insists on the corporeal boundaries of the West’s mode of knowing and truth-making. The book contends that the imagination of unveiling restores the West’s sense of its own power and enables it to intrude where it is ‘other’ – thus making it the centre and the agent by promising universal freedom, all the while stifling the question of what freedom is.

What is ‘creativity’? And what is ‘madness’? How far can we interpret an artist’s work through our knowledge of his or her mental state, and how far can we infer a mental state from a work of art? When does a work of art cease to be a personal statement by the artist and become a matter of public concern? The contributions to this book attempt to answer some of these questions. They come from a wide range of disciplines and experiences – a practising psychiatrist, a practising artist suffering from reactive depression, and critics working in literature, film, music and the visual arts. The essays include discussions of the ‘myth of creativity’, the music of Robert Schumann, the borders of sanity in the writing of Lawrence Durrell, the ‘insane truth’ of Virginia Woolf, the meeting of doctor and patient in the poetry of Anne Sexton, mood disorders in the fiction of David Foster Wallace, love and madness in the poetry of Hafiz of Shiraz, and the paintings of Adolf Wölfli. Central to this discussion of creativity, madness and civilisation is the difficulty of establishing an appropriate and effective vocabulary and mindset between critics and clinical psychiatrists, which would enable them to work together in understanding mental disturbance in creative artists.

As British women writers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries sought to define how they experienced their era's social and economic upheaval, they helped popularize a new style of bourgeois female sensibility. Building on her earlier work in Romantic Androgyny, Diane Long Hoeveler now examines the Gothic novels of Charlotte Smith, Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen, Charlotte Dacre Byrne, Mary Shelley, and the Bront&ës to show how these writers helped define femininity for women of the British middle class. Hoeveler argues that a female-created literary ideology, now known as &"victim feminism,&" arose as the Gothic novel helped create a new social role of professional victim for women adjusting to the new bourgeois order. These novels were thinly disguised efforts at propagandizing a new form of conduct for women, teaching that &"professional femininity&"&—a cultivated pose of wise passiveness and controlled emotions&—best prepared them for social survival. She examines how representations of both men and women in these novels moved from the purely psychosexual into social and political representations, and how these writers constructed a series of ideologies that would allow their female characters&—and readers&—fictitious mastery over an oppressive social and political system. Gothic Feminism takes a neo-feminist approach to these women's writings, treating them not as sacred texts but as thesis-driven works that attempted to instruct women in a series of strategic poses. It offers both a new understanding of the genre and a wholly new interpretation of feminism as a literary ideology.

This book examines major British and American missionary films during the Golden Age of Hollywood to explore the significance of race, gender, and spirituality in relation to the lives of the missionaries portrayed in film during the middle third of the twentieth century. Film both influences and reflects culture, and racial, gender, and religious identities are some of the most debated issues globally today. In the movies explored in this book, missionary interactions with various people groups reflect the historical changes which took place during this time.

This is a personal self-examination and Christian growth study that should challenge every true believer. Reading, studying, and understanding Beyond The Veil can be a life changing experience. If you believe you are alone in your shortcomings, then I challenge you to read this study. This book will open your eyes to the reality of your life in a comparative study with some of the mighty men of God. It is written in everyday Englishplain and unassuming, just facing the reality of lifes daily struggles. This book will help you to stop hiding from your past, your fears, and your shortcomings. Beyond the Veil will bring you face to face with your shortcomings and face to face with your God. It is my hope that you will forever change like Paul on the road to Damascus.