Women, Gender, Religion

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Introduction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Women, Gender, Religion: Troubling Categories and Transforming Knowledge

      • Elizabeth A. Castelli

      Pages 3-25

3. Categories of Analysis and Critique: “Gender,” “Religion,” “Feminism”

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-27

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   2. What’s in a Name? Exploring the Dimensions of What “Feminist Studies in Religion” Means

      • Miriam Peskowitz

      Pages 29-33

   3. Weaving the Fabric of Our Lives

      • Carol P. Christ

      Pages 34-39

   4. Unweaving: A Response to Carol P. Christ

      • Miriam Peskowitz

      Pages 40-45

   5. Reweaving

      • Carol P. Christ

      Pages 46-48

   6. “Gender” for a Marxist Dictionary: The Sexual Politics of a Word

      • Donna J. Haraway

      Pages 49-75

   7. The Translation of Cultures: Engendering Yorùbá Language, Orature, and World-Sense

      • Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí

      Pages 76-97

   8. Snakes Alive: Resituating the Moral in the Study of Religion

      • Robert A. Orsi

      Pages 98-118

   9. Transnationalism, Feminism, and Fundamentalism

      • Minoo Moallem

      Pages 119-145

4. Origins, Identities, and Appropriations

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 147-147

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   2. Sexuality, Sin, and Sorrow: The Emergence of the Female Character

      • Mieke Bal

      Pages 149-173

   3. Sacrifice as Remedy for Having Been Born of Woman

      • Nancy Jay

      Pages 174-194

   4. “Shahbano”

      • Zakia Pathak, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

      Pages 195-215

   5. A Question of Origins: Goddess Cults Greek and Modern

      • Helene P. Foley

      Pages 216-236

   6. On Medicine Women and White Shame-ans: New Age Native Americanism and Commodity Fetishism as Pop Culture Feminism

      • Laura E. Donaldson

      Pages 237-253

5. Gender and Religious Experience: Interdisciplinary Approaches

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 255-255

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   2. Margery Kempe Answers Back

      • Carolyn Dinshaw

      Pages 257-287

This up-to-date and forward-looking collection of essays on gender and religion fills a crucial gap. Interdisciplinary and multi-traditional, this volume highlights the contributions that different disciplinary approaches make to feminist/gender studies and religion. Designed for the classroom, the Reader simultaneously assesses the state of the field and raises questions for further inquiry and investigation.

• anthropology
• feminism
• gender
• gender studies
• history
• religion
• women

'Working the nexus of several volatile categories-women, gender, religion-these essays explore both theoretical and practical occasions on which these terms must be mutually interpreted. From the perspectives of diverse disciplines, the authors take up the most important and difficult challenges to feminism. Each essay is fascinating and instructive. Together they expose and explore the state of the discourse at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This is the essential book for feminist studies in religion.'

'These stimulating and sophisticated essays combine to create an essential

collection of feminist studies in religion.' - Margaret R. Miles, Dillenberger Professor of Historical Theology, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley

'An excellent basic text for an academic introduction to the field.' - WaterWheel

'This collection will prove an invaluable, if demanding, text for those undergraduate and postgraduate courses in religion and gender which aim to be multi-traditional and cross-historical...no serious student of the discipline should ignore its manifold challenges to understanding.' - Melissa Raphael, Modern Believing

ELIZABETH A. CASTELLI is Assistant Professor of Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University and has published widely in Biblical Studies, early Christian history, and feminist studies in religion. Her publications include Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (1991), The Postmodern Bible (1995), and Reimagining Christian Origins (1996), co-edited with Hal Taussig.

ROSAMOND C. RODMAN is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religion at Columbia University.

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