Description
Book SynopsisSex, Gender and the Sacred presents a multi-faith, multi-disciplinary collection of essays that explore the interlocking narratives of religion and gender encompassing 4,000 years of history.
Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors vii
Introduction: Beyond the ‘Religious Turn’? Past, Present and Future Perspectives in Gender History 1
JOANNA DE GROOT AND SUE MORGAN
Part I: Crossing Cultures and Transnational Exchanges
1 Witches, Female Priests and Sacred Manoeuvres: (De)Stabilising Gender and Sexuality in a Cuban Religion of African Origin 31
CAROLYN E. WATSON
2 Liberal Religion and the ‘Woman Question’ between East and West: Perspectives from a Nineteenth-Century Bengali Women’s Journal 51
CLARE MIDGLEY
3 Indeterminacy in Meaning: Religious Syncretism and Dynastic Historiography in the Shann¨uren zhuan 67
YUET KEUNG LO
4 ‘All of Their Customs are Daughters of Their Religion’: Baptists in Post-Revolutionary Mexico, 1920s–present 83
KATHLEEN M. McINTYRE
5 Creating the ‘Problem Hindu’: Sati, Thuggee and Female Infanticide in India, 1800–60 104
DANIEL J. R. GREY
Part II: Religion, Embodiment and Subjectivity
6 Engendering Purity and Impurity in Assyriological Studies: A Historiographical Overview 119
´ERICA COUTO-FERREIRA AND AGN`ES GARCIA-VENTURA
7 Lamentation Motifs in Medieval Hagiography 135
ANNE E. BAILEY
8 Architecture of Desire: Mediating the Female Gaze in the Medieval English Anchorhold 150
MICHELLE M. SAUER
9 The Alluring Beauty of a Leonardesque Ideal: Masculinity and Spirituality in Renaissance Milan 170
MAYA CORRY
10 ‘Deaf to the Word’: Gender, Deafness and Protestantism in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland 195
ESME CLEALL
Part III: Religion, Gender and Sexuality
11 The Sexual Shame of the Chaste: ‘Abortion Miracles’ in Early Medieval Saints’ Lives 211
ZUBIN MISTRY
12 ‘Give Me Chastity’: Masculinity and Attitudes to Chastity and Celibacy in the Middle Ages 225
PAT CULLUM
13 Common Soldiers, Same-Sex Love and Religion in the Early Eighteenth-Century British Army 241
SUSAN GANE
14 ‘Dark Ecstasies’: Sex, Mysticism and Psychology in Early Twentieth-Century England 256
JOY DIXON
15 Made Flesh? Gender and Doctrine in Religious Violence in Twentieth-Century Spain 272
MARY VINCENT
Part IV: Gender, Religion and Political Activity
16 Conversion Trouble: The Alawis of Hadhramawt, Empire, Gender and the Problem of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century South India 287
WILSON CHACKO JACOB
17 ‘Fatherland, Religion, Family’: Exploring the History of a Slogan in Greece, 1880–1930 304
EFFI GAZI
18 The More Things Change: Debating Gender and Religion in India’s Hindu Laws, 1920–2006 315
RINA VERMA WILLIAMS
Index 329
