Feminist Theory and the Study of Religion
This course aims to put feminist theory and religious studies into conversation with each other in order to examine the resulting intersections, points of mutual illumination, and aporias. The course will investigate the history of feminist approaches to religious studies as well as new directions in current scholarship including feminist and womanist theologies, goddess feminism, secular and post-secular feminisms, and transnational feminisms. We will consider the following questions: What does it mean to apply a gender studies lens to the study of religion? How do feminist conceptions of “liberation” reinforce or reject religious conceptions of “liberation”? What are the implications of the “return of religion” currently invoked in some feminist discourses? In thinking through these topics, we will read works by Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, Mary Daly, Saba Mahmood, and Rosi Braidotti, among others. This course seeks to move beyond prevalent assumptions of Judeo-Christian normativity in its analysis of feminist contributions to the study of religion. It pays particular attention to feminist approaches to the study of Asian religions, but with flexibility to highlight other geographic/thematic areas of interest to graduate students enrolled in the course.