Kristi Upson-Saia is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Occidental College. She specializes in the history and literature of early Christianity, with a focus on the ways in which early Christian identities were constructed through bodily appearances and performances. Her research interests also include gender and sexuality, orthodoxy and heresy, and, representations of deformed, scarred, and stigmatized bodies.

This is the first full-length monograph on the subject of dress in early Christianity. It pays attention to the ways in which dress expressed and shaped Christian identity, the role dress played in Christians' rivalries with pagan neighbours, and especially to the ways in which notions of gender were culled and revised in the process.

Introduction 1. Elite Roman Women's Dress in the Early Imperial Period 2. Scripting Christians' Clothing and Grooming 3. Performance Anxiety: Dress and Gender Crises in Early Christian Asceticism 4. Narrating Cross-Dressing in Female Saints' Lives Conclusion