<strong>A provocative, interdisciplinary study of nuns on the big screen, from </strong><strong><em>The Bells of St. Mary's</em></strong><strong> (1945) to </strong><strong><em>Doubt </em></strong><strong>(2008), that shines fresh light on the cinematic nun as a woman and a religious in the twentieth century.</strong><br><br>Ingrid Bergman's engaging screen performance as Sister Mary Benedict in <em>The Bells of St. Mary's</em> 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? <strong>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? </strong><br><br>In <em>Veiled Desires</em>--a unique full-length, in-depth study of nuns in film--Maureen Sabine explores these questions in a <strong>groundbreaking interdisciplinary study covering more than sixty years of cinema</strong>. She looks at an impressive breadth of films in which the nun features as an ardent lead character, including <em>The Bells of St. Mary's </em>(1945), <em>Black Narcissus</em> (1947), <em>Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison </em>(1957), <em>Sea Wife</em> (1957), <em>The Nun's Story </em>(1959), <em>The Sound of Music</em> (1965), <em>Change of Habit </em>(1969),<em> In This House of Brede</em> (1975), <em>Agnes of God</em> (1985), <em>Dead Man Walking</em> (1995), and <em>Doubt</em> (2008). <br><br><em>Veiled Desires</em> considers how the beautiful and charismatic stars who play chaste nuns, from <strong>Ingrid Bergman</strong> and <strong>Audrey Hepburn</strong> to <strong>Susan Sarandon </strong>and <strong>Meryl Streep</strong>, 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 <strong>a more complex and holistic picture of</strong> <strong>nuns on screen by showing how the films dramatize these women's Christian call to serve, sacrifice, and dedicate themselves to God</strong>, and their erotic desire for intimacy, agency, achievement, and fulfillment.