The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Womens Studies in Religion

(Paperback)

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The handbook offers interreligious and multicultural perspectives on womens studies in religion in conversation with specific contextualized gender-biased justice challenges. Contributing authors address 25 current and trending themes from their diverse socio-cultural-religious backgrounds. Themes move across the spectrum of womens studies in religion, blurring the boundaries beyond religious studies to include perspectives from ethics, philosophy, sociology, economics, and law as. Religious diversity addresses challenges for womens studies through the lens of Wicca, Buddhist, Asian Trans Pacific, Hinduism, Judaism, Muslima, and Christian. The handbook is practical, contemporary, and relevant as it moves theory to practical application in the section on challenging and changing system gender injustice with chapters on sexual violence and the #MeToo movement, femicide and feminicide, a Mohawk response to colonial dominion and violations to Indigenous lands and women, and a religio-politico witness for love and justice, include how to engage the theories of womens studies in religion in the public square through civic engagement to create empowerment for actual, practical change. It shows the future movement of the becoming of womens studies with chapters digital activism, reimagining womens mosque spaces online, minoritized sexual identities, and spiritual homelessness, and charges readers to see hope now by challenging and changing gender injustice.

Reviews

These 25 essays by faculty and graduate students have great classroom potential. Contributions include smart theoretical essays (Michelle Muellers Constructing Wicca as Womens Religion: A By-Product of Feminist Religious Scholarship shows how academics can sway popular imagination); compelling case studies (e.g., Antoinette DeNapolis I Am the One Who Will Change the World: A Female Gurus Response to Sexual Inequality and Violence in Hinduism and Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpas For All Sentient Beings: The Question of Gender in Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist Communities); interrogations of systemic issues (e.g., Candace Johnsons fascinating Feminist Ethics and the Harms of Credibility Excess and Dawn Martin Hills searing Doctrine of Discovery: A Mohawk Feminist Response to Colonial Dominion and Violations to Indigenous Lands and Women); and guidance on moving from theory to praxis (Sharon Welchs Reconfiguring Economic Sustainability: A Feminist Ethic for Liberty and Justice for All). The focus of the collection is more on lived experiencetrauma, #MeToo, familial and state-sponsored violence, postcolonial and eco-feminist readings, ethnography, language, reclamation of tradition, online religionthan on textual interpretation or doctrine. Resources include glossaries of hashtags, people, terms, and organizations. Recommended.

Author Bio

Helen T. Boursier is a professor of theology at College of St. Mary and Austin Graduate School of Theology. She is a founding member of Feminist Theology in Religion, an academic research group who publish the Journal of Theological Feminist Research. She has a PhD in Theology and a PhD of Divinity and is an ordained priest.