2009-10 Research Associates
and Visiting Faculty
Benjamin
Dunning (Fordham University)
Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Early Christian
History
Specters of Paul: Sexual Difference, Creation, and Resurrection in Early
Christianity
An examination of theologies of sexual difference in second- and
third-century Christian thought. Particular attention is paid to the ways
in which the text of Genesis and the theological anthropology of the
Apostle Paul fueled, shaped, and also constrained early Christian
approaches to the issue. Tania
Oldenhage (University of Basel)
Visiting Lecturer on Women's Studies and Theology
Blessed Are the Barren: Birth and Catastrophe in the Passion Narratives
This project offers a critical reading of resonances between New
Testament passion narratives and women's birth stories. The figure of
Jesus as a birthing mother has a long tradition in women's religious
writing. How can feminists today draw on this trope without silencing
birth stories of catastrophe? The "blessing of the barren" in
the Gospel of Luke is used to show how images of birthing highlight the
devastating effects of violence. Solimar
Otero (Louisiana State University)
Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Afro-Atlantic
Religion
Coming Home: Sacred Spaces and Diaspora in Afro-Cuban Women's
Culture
This interdisciplinary project addresses gendered spaces and geographies
in the Afro-Cuban religion of Santerķa. It explores the construction of
gendered cartographies and sacred spaces created by female priests, santeras,
in Cuba. These ritual consecrations perform a portable Cuban identity that
can be perpetuated through religious practice and social performance in
religious diasporas.
Lucinda Ramberg
(University of Kentucky)
Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and South Asian Religion
Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Kinship of Religion
and Sex
This book project considers religiosity, sexuality, and postcolonial
governance through an ethnography of theogamy (devadasi dedication) and
its reform in Karnataka, South India. Karnataka devadasis are Dalit female
priests whose sexuality and religiosity are bound up in their marriage to
the devi they serve. This ethnography will provide an occasion for a
consideration of what counts as religion and who, and what, marriage is
for.
Susan Crawford
Sullivan (College of the Holy Cross)
Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Sociology of Religion
Colorado Scholar
Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty
Based on survey data analysis and interviews with women and pastors, this
project explores personal faith and organized religion in the lives of
low-income urban mothers. While rejecting a reductive notion of religion
in poor women's lives, Sullivan argues that both organized and personal religion
can provide important resources to poor urban mothers facing difficult
challenges.
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