Description
Book SynopsisShows that the body of Augustine's work has much to offer as feminists explore, challenge, and reframe his thinking while forging different paradigms for construing gender, power, and notions of divinity.
Trade Review“Through the centuries, Augustine’s writings have been a major influence on Christian views of sexuality, gender, and women, as well as on such more traditional theological topics as the Trinity. In this volume—accessibly written for students and the general reader—contemporary women scholars from a variety of humanities disciplines explore how Augustine’s approach to these issues has shaped the Western social, cultural, and religious landscape.”
—Elizabeth Clark,Duke University
“Stark, Miller, Burrus, and Keller: these essays should be required reading for any discussion of feminism and Augustine. The remaining essays in the volume are useful, and engage similar themes—Stark should be praised for her consistent editorial perspective.”
—Catherine Conybeare Philosophy in Review
“It is clear that examining the history of philosophy is important to understand the social/cultural legacy we have inherited for better or for worse. It is incumbent upon us as scholars to clarify the fundamental positions of this inheritance, allowing it to stand (as much as we are able) on its own terms in all its glory and failures. Anything else is, in my view, intellectually dishonest. I see this collection of essays, and Penn State’s Rereading the Canon series in general, as an attempt to do just that. From my perspective, the book succeeds marvelously in its purpose. This is a book that anyone who has a sincere desire to come to terms with Augustine’s legacy and its impact on the lives of both women and men ought to consider reading.”
—Colleen McCluskey Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Table of ContentsContents
Preface
Introduction
Judith Chelius Stark
1. Augustine: Sexuality, Gender, and Women
Rosemary Radford Ruether
2. Monica: The Feminine Face of Christ
Anne-Marie Bowery
3. Augustine's Rhetoric of the Feminine in the Confessions: Woman as Mother, Woman as Other
Felecia McDuffie
4. Confessing Monica
Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller
5. O Mother, Where Art Thou? In Search of Saint Monnica
Rebecca Moore
6. Not Nameless but Unnamed: The Woman Torn from Augustine's Side
Margaret R. Miles
7. Augustine's Letters to Women
Joanne McWilliam
8. De cura feminarum: Augustine the Bishop, North African Women, and the Development of a Theology of Female Nature
E. Ann Matter
9. Augustine on Women: In God's Image, but Less So
Judith Chelius Stark
10. To Remember Self, to Remember God: Augustine on Sexuality, Rationality, and the Trinity
Julie B. Miller
11. The Evanescence of Masculinity: Deferral in Saint Augustine's Confessions and Some Thoughts on Its Bearing on the Sex/Gender Debate
Penelope Deutscher
12. Poem: To Aurelius Augustine from the Mother of His Son
Ann Conrad Lammers
Select Bibliography
Contributors
Index
