Dan Brown, in The Da Vinci Code, says that Mary Magdalene was "suppressed" in the culture of the Middle Ages. According to him, the only image of her must be a "coded" one, encrypting her in the figure conventionally identified as St. John the Apostle, in Leonardo Da Vinci's famous painting of the Last Supper. Judy Shoaf, author of The Da Vinci Barcode, will give us an entertaining illustrated tour of medieval and later depictions of Mary Magdalene, with attention to her iconography and tidbits about the various legends and traditions about this remarkable saint.

About the speaker: Dr. Judith P. Shoaf, Director of the University of Florida Language Learning Center, grew up in Tacoma, Washington and earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Cornell University in French and Medieval Literature. At various times she has lived in Paris, Rome and Reykyavik, Iceland. She has taught introductory and survey European literature courses at Cornell, Yale, and the University of Florida. She is active in a variety of areas, including moderating an email discussion group on King Arthur, studying and writing about Japanese dolls, and working on a scholarly journal, Exemplaria. In her spare time she has written a novel, published in 2006, called The Da Vinci Barcode.