2012-13 Research Associates

Australian National University

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and European History and WSRP Research Associate

Sacred Liberty: The Nuns of Paris, the French Revolution, and Napoleon

This project examines the suppression of female religious communities in Paris during the French Revolution and their revival under Napoleon. Based on extensive archival research, it reconstructs the development and impact of revolutionary policy to offer crucial new insights into the relationship among politics, religion, and gender.

Kristin Bloomer

Carleton College

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and South Asian Religions and WSRP Research Associate

Possessed by Mary: Hinduism, Roman Catholicism, and Spirit Possession in Tamil Nadu, South India

This book investigates Marian spirit possession, religious syncretism, gender, and power in contemporary South India. It follows three Tamil, Roman Catholic women who claim to be possessed by Mary, the mother of Jesus. It argues that their counter-hegemonic rituals challenge orthodoxies, patriarchies, and notions of religions as bounded entities.

Judith Casselberry

Bowdoin College

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and African American Religions and WSRP Research Associate

Justified by Works: Gender, Faith, and Power in Black Apostolic Pentecostalism

This ethnography integrates spiritual, material, social, and structural spheres of twenty-first century, metropolitan New York, black Apostolic women's work. It highlights the role of black women's labor in defining and sustaining personal faith, building churches and communities and faith, and navigating intra-racial and intergender power relations.

Hauwa Ibrahim

Independent Scholar

Visiting Lecturer on Women's Studies and Islamic Law and WSRP Research Associate

Humanizing Shariah: A Memoir of the Human Face of a Legal Practice

This project addresses the practical and theoretical challenges of protecting women's rights under Shariah law as it is practiced in Northern Nigeria. It recounts a life spent working within the Islamic system and engaging the "fundamentalists" to achieve justice when defending women sentenced to death, while maintaining the highest global standard of rule of law and justice.

Lori K. Pearson

Carleton College

Visiting Associate Professor of Women's Studies, Theology, and Philosophy and WSRP Research Associate

Sexuality and Social Order: Marianne Weber on Religion and Modernity

This project focuses on the category of religion (and related concepts of domination, authority, and emancipation) in the work of Marianne Weber (1870-1954). It uses Weber's work to show that questions of gender were central to the political and cultural concerns that animated scholarly debates about religion and modernity in fin de siècle Germany.

Zilka Spahic Siljak

University of Sarajevo

Visiting Lecturer on Women's Studies and Islamic Studies and WSRP Research Associate

Colorado Scholar

Women and Peace-Building in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This project examines the previously under-recognized efforts and achievements of women peace-builders in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Drawing upon life story interviews with women of multiple ethnic and religious backgrounds, it documents and analyzes their contributions to reconciliation in a postwar, plural democratic society.