Re-riting Woman


Book Description

Re-riting Woman is an ethnographic study of Dianic Wicca, a modern Pagan religion in which the divine is solely feminine. Kristy S. Coleman explores Dianic Witchcraft, what it really means to practice Wicca today, and how our understanding of womanhood can change with the experience of a divine feminine.




Re-riting Woman


Book Description

Re-riting Woman presents the first in-depth ethnographic study of Dianic Wicca. Its subject, Circle of Aradia, is a branch of the religion based in the Los Angeles area. This religion-of, by, and for women-conceives the Divine as exclusively female, and has infused feminism into Wicca worldwide. Kristy S. Coleman combines ethnography with theory to present a full account of what Dianic Witches' lived practice looks like and what it means. The theorist of focus, Luce Irigaray, asserts that women must reclaim their own space and imagine the Divine as female to achieve full emancipation. Moreover, Irigaray's critical analysis of Western culture creates a subtext that clarifies what is at stake in this practice. Thick description of seasonal rituals dispels fears and stereotypes about Wicca, and offers readers a comforting familiarity and shared healing. Coleman employs ritual theory to suggest why and how these rites wield such meaning-altering possibilities. Practitioners' statements that describe a shift in worldview and self-conception elicit Coleman's proposal that Dianic rituals re(w)rite the valuation and meaning of woman. Dianic women's stories reveal both the transformative power of the tradition's practice and the organization's challenges related to power politics.




Re-writing Women as Victims


Book Description

This volume critically analyses political strategies, civil society initiatives and modes of representation that challenge the conventional narratives of women in contexts of violence. It deepens into the concepts of victimhood and agency that inform the current debate on women as victims. The volume opens the scope to explore initiatives that transcend the pair abuser–victim and explore the complex relations between gender and violence, and individual and collective accountability, through politics, activism and cultural productions in order to seek social transformation for gender justice. In innovative and interdisciplinary case studies, it brings attention to initiatives and narratives that make new spaces possible in which to name, self-identify, and resignify the female political subject as a social agent in situations of violence. The volume is global in scope, bringing together contributions ranging from India, Cambodia or Kenya, to Quebec, Bosnia or Spain. Different aspects of gender-based violence are analysed, from intimate relationships, sexual violence, military contexts, society and institutions. Re-writing Women as Victims: From Theory to Practice will be a key text for students, researchers and professionals in gender studies, political sciences, sociology and media and cultural Studies. Activists and policy makers will also find its practical approach and engagement with social transformation to be essential reading.




Encyclopedia of Women in World Religions [2 volumes]


Book Description

This reference offers reliable knowledge about women's diverse faith practices throughout history and prehistory, and across cultures. Across the span of human history, women have participated in world-building and life-sustaining cultural creativity, making enormous contributions to religion and spirituality. In the contemporary period, women have achieved greater equality, with more educational opportunities, female role models in public life, and opportunities for religious expression than ever before. Contemporaneously with this increased visibility, women are actively and energetically engaging with religion for themselves and for their communities. Drawing on the expertise of a range of scholars, this reference chronicles the religious experiences of women across time and cultures. The book includes sections on major religions as well as on spirituality, African religions, prehistoric religions, and other broad topics. Each section begins with an introduction, followed by reference entries on specialized subjects along with excerpts from primary source documents. The entries provide numerous suggestions for further reading, and the book closes with a detailed bibliography.




Writing Woman, Writing Place


Book Description

This book analyses the ways in which contemporary women writers in the two 'settler' colonies of Australia and South Africa explore notions of self, identity and place in their fiction.




Female Leaders in New Religious Movements


Book Description

In this book, historians of religion and gender studies explore the biographies of a number of female leaders, and the factors within their groups and cultural contexts that support these women’s religious leadership. New Religious Movements have been supportive of women taking roles of leadership for a long time. Authors of this book examine issues of gender and female leadership from diverse theoretical and methodological standpoints. The book covers a broad range of groups both with regard to time and place, covering Paganism, Hindu guru groups, Christian organizations, esoteric/ mystical movements, African churches, and a Japanese NRM. The common focal point is the powerful, prophetic, charismatic women who have founded and/ or led New Religious Movements.




Women and Gender Issues in British Paganism, 1945–1990


Book Description

This book explores the ways in which changing views on gender and the place of women in society during the latter half of the twentieth century affected women’s participation and standing within British Paganism. More specifically, it examines how British Wiccans and Wiccan-derived Pagans reacted to the rise of 'second-wave' feminism and the Women's Liberation Movement in the UK – with a special emphasis on the reception of feminist theory hailing from the USA – and to the emergence of feminist branches of Witchcraft and Goddess Spirituality during the 1970s and 1980s. The book draws on primary sources never before analyzed in an academic context and makes a valuable contribution to the growing body of knowledge on gender and religion during the twentieth century, as very little research has been conducted on the relations between the history of modern Paganism and that of second-wave feminism in the UK.




Women in New Religions


Book Description

An in-depth history of selected New Religions that highlights the roles of women in their founding and continual practice Women in New Religions offers an engaging look at women’s evolving place in the birth and development of new religious movements. It focuses on four disparate new religions—Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, The Family International, and Wicca—to illuminate their implications for gender socialization, religious leadership and participation, sexuality, and family ideals. Religious worldviews and gender roles interact with one another in complicated ways. This is especially true within new religions, which frequently set roles for women in ways that help the movements to define their boundaries in relation to the wider society. As new religious movements emerge, they often position themselves in opposition to dominant society and concomitantly assert alternative roles for women. But these religions are not monolithic: rather than defining gender in rigid and repressive terms, new religions sometimes offer possibilities to women that are not otherwise available. Vance traces expectations for women as the religions emerge, and transformation of possibilities and responsibilities for women as they mature. Weaving theory with examination of each movement’s origins, history, and beliefs and practices, this text contextualizes and situates ideals for women in new religions. The book offers an accessible analysis of the complex factors that influence gender ideology and its evolution in new religious movements, including the movements’ origins, charismatic leadership and routinization, theology and doctrine, and socio-historical contexts. It shows how religions shape definitions of women’s place in a way that is informed by response to social context, group boundaries, and identity.




The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Women’s Studies in Religion


Book Description

The handbook offers interreligious and multicultural perspectives on women’s 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 women’s 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 women’s 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 women’s 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 women’s studies with chapters digital activism, reimagining women’s mosque spaces online, minoritized sexual identities, and spiritual homelessness, and charges readers to see “hope now” by challenging and changing gender injustice.




Novelist as a Vocation


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • An insightful look into the mind of a master storyteller—and a unique look at the craft of writing from the beloved and best-selling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. "Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers" —New York Times Book Review A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: Esquire, Vulture, LitHub, New York Observer Aspiring writers and readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this engaging book from the internationally best-selling author. Haruki Murakami now shares with readers his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians. Here are the personal details of a life devoted to craft: the initial moment at a Yakult Swallows baseball game, when he suddenly knew he could write a novel; the importance of memory, what he calls a writer’s “mental chest of drawers”; the necessity of loneliness, patience, and his daily running routine; the seminal role a carrier pigeon played in his career and more. "What I want to say is that in a certain sense, while the novelist is creating a novel, he is simultaneously being created by the novel as well." —Haruki Murakami