• Foreword
• Preface
• Note on transliteration
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Representations, Re-presentations, and Retrieval
• 1. The Puranas as Repositaries of Ritual Observances
• 2. Redefining Domesticity through Ritual Observances
• 3. Contestation and Negotiation in Myths and Rituals in Myths
• 4. Channelizing Feminine Energy through Representations of Goddess(es)
• Conclusion:The Social Consequences of 'Sacralizing' Women's Familial Roles
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This book is a study of the shifts in historical context of ritual observances from Vedic to Puranic traditions. It looks into the representations of women in early textual traditions to explore how women's identities are not only established in ritual spaces but are also constantly reworked and negotiated. It is in this context that this book attempts to're-read' the Matsyamahapura?a and through the study of vratas and myths, reconstruct the anxieties that theological traditions have with regard to women and women's responses to these anxieties. Patriarchal traditions have never remained frozen, they constantly reinvent themselves to deal with the negotiations and contestations that women make. It is these very traditions then, which, when read carefully, tell us about women and the challenges that they constantly put to theological traditions. The book will revise our understanding of later Vedic and Puranic texts as well as provide a deeper understanding of the gender roles that evolved during this time period.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Acknowledgments; A Special Note on Barbara Robinette Moss (1954-2009)
• Duane DeRaad; Introduction: A Faith of Verbs; I. Seeking Faith in Motion and Stillness; Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer
• Mary Karr; Pilgrimage
• Debra Moffitt; Chiaroscuro: Shimmer and Shadow
• Susan Cushman; II. Keeping Faith of Our Mothers; Taking Terroir on Faith
• Beth Ann Fennelly; Amazons in Appalachia
• Marilou Awiakta; Why We Can't Talk to You About Voodoo
• Brenda Marie Osbey; III. Embodying Faith in the Flesh; Magic
• Amy Blackmarr; Going to Church: A Sartorial Odyssey
• Marshall Chapman.

• What the Body Knows
• Barbara Brown Taylor; The Queen of Hearts
• Margaret Gibson; IV. Questioning Life Without Faith?; Rapture on Hold
• Rheta Grimsley Johnson; The Only Jews in Town
• Stella Suberman; A Purposeful Life
• Mitzi Adams; V. Transforming Faith in Change; A Fairy Tale: The Prodigal Daughter Returns
• Connie May Fowler; Alice Walker Calls God "Mama": An Interview with Alice
• Valerie Reiss; Signs of Faith
• Barbara Robinette Moss; What We Will Call Nature
• Cia White; Contributors; Permissions.

Circling Faith is a collection of essays by southern women that encompasses spirituality and the experience of winding through the religiously charged environment of the American South. Mary Karr, in 'Facing Altars, ' describes how the consolation she found in poetry directed her to a similar solace in prayer. In 'Chiaroscuro: Shimmer and Shadow, ' Susan Cushman recounts how her dissatisfaction with a Presbyterian upbringing led her to hold her own worship services at home and eventually to join the Eastern Orthodox Church. 'Magic' by Amy Blackmarr depicts a religious practice that occurs wholly outside of any formal setting - she recognizes places, such as a fishing shack in south Georgia, and things, such as crystal Cherokee earrings, as reminders that God exists everywhere and that a Great Comforter is always present. In 'The Only Jews in Town, ' Stella Suberman gives her account of growing up as a religious minority in Tennessee, connecting her story to a larger narrative of Eastern European Jews who moved away from the Northeast, often to found and run 'Jew stores' in midwestern and southern towns. Alice Walker, in an interview with Valerie Reiss titled 'Alice Walker Calls God 'Mama, '' relates her dynamic relationship with her God, which includes meditation and yoga, and explains how she views the role of faith in her work, including her novel The Color Purple. These essays showcase the large spectrum of spirituality that abides in the South, as well as the equally large spectrum of individual women who hold these faiths.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Acknowledgments; A Special Note on Barbara Robinette Moss (1954-2009)
• Duane DeRaad; Introduction: A Faith of Verbs; I. Seeking Faith in Motion and Stillness; Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer
• Mary Karr; Pilgrimage
• Debra Moffitt; Chiaroscuro: Shimmer and Shadow
• Susan Cushman; II. Keeping Faith of Our Mothers; Taking Terroir on Faith
• Beth Ann Fennelly; Amazons in Appalachia
• Marilou Awiakta; Why We Can't Talk to You About Voodoo
• Brenda Marie Osbey; III. Embodying Faith in the Flesh; Magic
• Amy Blackmarr; Going to Church: A Sartorial Odyssey
• Marshall Chapman.

• What the Body Knows
• Barbara Brown Taylor; The Queen of Hearts
• Margaret Gibson; IV. Questioning Life Without Faith?; Rapture on Hold
• Rheta Grimsley Johnson; The Only Jews in Town
• Stella Suberman; A Purposeful Life
• Mitzi Adams; V. Transforming Faith in Change; A Fairy Tale: The Prodigal Daughter Returns
• Connie May Fowler; Alice Walker Calls God "Mama": An Interview with Alice
• Valerie Reiss; Signs of Faith
• Barbara Robinette Moss; What We Will Call Nature
• Cia White; Contributors; Permissions.

Circling Faith is a collection of essays by southern women that encompasses spirituality and the experience of winding through the religiously charged environment of the American South. Mary Karr, in 'Facing Altars, ' describes how the consolation she found in poetry directed her to a similar solace in prayer. In 'Chiaroscuro: Shimmer and Shadow, ' Susan Cushman recounts how her dissatisfaction with a Presbyterian upbringing led her to hold her own worship services at home and eventually to join the Eastern Orthodox Church. 'Magic' by Amy Blackmarr depicts a religious practice that occurs wholly outside of any formal setting - she recognizes places, such as a fishing shack in south Georgia, and things, such as crystal Cherokee earrings, as reminders that God exists everywhere and that a Great Comforter is always present. In 'The Only Jews in Town, ' Stella Suberman gives her account of growing up as a religious minority in Tennessee, connecting her story to a larger narrative of Eastern European Jews who moved away from the Northeast, often to found and run 'Jew stores' in midwestern and southern towns. Alice Walker, in an interview with Valerie Reiss titled 'Alice Walker Calls God 'Mama, '' relates her dynamic relationship with her God, which includes meditation and yoga, and explains how she views the role of faith in her work, including her novel The Color Purple. These essays showcase the large spectrum of spirituality that abides in the South, as well as the equally large spectrum of individual women who hold these faiths.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1. The Great Divide
• 2. New Religions
• 3. Spirits and Bodies
• 4. New Age and Spirituality
• 5. Conservative Religion
• 6. Biology, Roles and Attitudes
• 7. Risk
• 8. Ways of Life
• 9. Secularization
• 10. The Sum of Small Differences.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Women are more religious than men. Despite being excluded from leadership positions, in almost every culture and religious tradition, women are more likely than men to pray, to worship, and to claim that their faith is important to them. Women also dominate the world of 'New Age' spirituality and are far more superstitious than men. This book reviews the now-sizeable body of social research to consider if the gender gap in religion is indeed universal. Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce extensively critique competing explanations of the differences found. They conclude that the gender gap is not the result of biology but is rather the consequence of important social differences over-lapping and reinforcing each other. Responsibility for managing birth, child-rearing and death, for example, and attitudes to the body, illness and health, each play a part. In the West, the gender gap is exaggerated because the social changes that undermined the plausibility of religion bore most heavily on men first. Where the lives of men and women become more similar, and where religious indifference grows, the gender gap gradually disappears. Written in an accessible style whilst drawing some robust conclusions, the book's main purpose is to serve as a state-of-the-art review for those interested in one of the largest differences between male and female behaviour.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• TABLE OF CONTENTS; PREFACE; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS;
• CHAPTER I;
• CHAPTER II;
• CHAPTER III;
• CHAPTER IV;
• CHAPTER V;
• CHAPTER VI;
• CHAPTER VII;
• CHAPTER VIII; APPENDIX; BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX.

Recent years have seen a sea change in the way history is written and also in the way our conceptions of the past are being rewritten. In traditional historiography, women's articulation is often marginalized and dominated by male voices. Through centuries of patriarchal control, women negotiated many layers and levels of existence working out different forms of resistance which have often gone unnoticed. Bhakti was one such medium. Religion provided the space in the medieval period and women saints embraced bhakti to define their own truths in voices that question society, family and relationships. For all these women bhaktas, the rejection of the male power that they were tied to in subordinate relationship became the terrain for struggle, self assertion and alternative seeking. Most of these women lived during the period from 12th to 17th Century. While the dominant mode of worship in bhakti was prostration to a deity like a feudal lord, the women bhaktas' idea of God as a lover, a husband and a friend came as a breath of fresh air. The individual outpourings and the voices of these women, who had the courage to sing unfettered in their own voices, refused to melt in the din of the feudal scene which was largely patriarchal. This book will be useful to scholars interested in Feminist History, Comparative Religion and Asian Studies. The sensitive and rigorous research will be of great help to young scholars interested in embarking on a journey to discover religious history, especially with regards to women's history in the South Asian context.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: the pious sex / Andrea Radasanu
• The piety of Esther / Clifford Orwin
• Three tragic versions of female (im)piety: Clytemnestra, Jocasta, and Antigone / Kathrin H. Rosenfield
• Women, war, and piety in Plato's Laws / Dana Jalbert Stauffer
• Educating the perfect wife: piety and rational control in the Oeconomicus / Paul W. Ludwig
• Love and piety in Machiavelli's Mandragola / Catherine Connors --" Nay, then 'tis past jesting": piety and female friendship in Catharine Trotter's Love at a loss / Heather King
• Women, Christianity, and the modern in Montesquieu's Considerations on the Romans / Diana J. Schaub
• Rousseau's domestication of Amour-propre / Eve Grace
• Jane Austen's education of women: a study of Mansfield Park / Amy L. Bonnette
• Flaubert: Eros and politics after Rousseau / Andrea Radasanu
• Nietzche in Eden / Lise van Boxel
• Index
• About the contributors.

The Pious Sex strives to enlighten the reader with respect to the relationship between women and religion. The notion that there is a special relationship between women and piety may call to mind the worst of the prejudices associated with women over the ages: the characterization of women as superstitious and inherently irrational creatures who must be kept firmly in hand by the patriarchal establishment. The suggestion that there is a special relationship between women and piety conjures up the most oppressive picture of womanly virtue. The contributors of this volume revisit the claim that women constitute the pious sex and investigate the implications of such a designation. This collection of original essays examines the relationship between women and religion in the history of political thought broadly conceived. This theme is a remarkably revealing lens through which to view the Western philosophical and poetical traditions that have culminated in secular and egalitarian modern society. The essays also give highly analytical accounts of the manifold and intricate relationships between religion, family, and public life in the history of political thought, and the various ways in which these relationships have manifested themselves in pagan, Jewish, Christian, and post-Christian settings.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
This collection of original essays examines the relationship between women and religion in the history of political thought broadly conceived. This theme is a remarkably revealing lens through which to view the Western philosophical and poetical traditions that have culminated in secular and egalitarian modern society. The essays also give highly analytical accounts of the manifold and intricate relationships between religion, family and public life in the history of political thought, and the various ways in which these relationships have manifested themselves in pagan, Jewish, Christian and post-Christian settings.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• I. INTRODUCTORY MATERIALS Introducing A Garland of Feminist Reflections
• 1. How Did This Ever Happen to Me? A Wisconsin Farm Girl Who Became a Buddhist Theologian When She Grew Up II. FIVE ESSAYS ON METHOD
• 2. Androcentrism and Androgyny in the Methodology of History of Religions
• 3. Where Have We Been? Where Do We Need to Go? Key Questions for Women Studies in Religion and Feminist Theology
• 4. The Place of the Personal and the Subjective in Religious Studies
• 5. Methodology: Tool or Trap? Comments from a Feminist Perspective
• 6. What Went Wrong? Feminism and Freedom from the Prison of Gender Roles III. THEORY APPLIED: THREE TESTS
• 7. Menstruation and Childbirth as Ritual and Religious Experience among Native Australians
• 8. Toward a New Model of the Hindu Pantheon: A Report on Twenty-Some Years of Feminist Reflection
• 9. The Prepatriarchal Hypothesis: An Assessment IV. FEMINIST THEOLOGY
• 10. Steps toward Feminine Imagery in Jewish Theology
• 11. Is the (Hindu) Goddess a Feminist?
• 12. Life-Giving Images in Vajrayana Buddhist Ritual
• 13. Feminist Theology as Theology of Religions V. BUDDHIST FEMINISM: FEMINIST BUDDHISM
• 14. The Clarity in the Anger
• 15. Why (Engaged) Buddhists Should Care about Gender Issues
• 16. The Dharma of Gender
• 17. Yeshe Tsogyel: Enlightened Consort, Great Teacher, Female Role Model
• 18. Buddhist Women and Teaching Authority
• 19. Is the Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full? A Feminist Assessment of Buddhism at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century
• 20. Being a North American Buddhist Woman: Reflections of a Feminist Pioneer Notes.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Rita M. Gross has long been acknowledged as a founder in the field of feminist theology. One of the earliest scholars in religious studies to discover how feminism affects that discipline, she is recognized as preeminent in Buddhist feminist theology. The essays in "A Garland of Feminist Reflections" represent the major aspects of her work and provide an overview of her methodology in women's studies in religion and feminism. The introductory article, written specifically for this volume, summarizes the conclusions Gross has reached about gender and feminism after forty years of searching and exploring, and the autobiography, also written for this volume, narrates how those conclusions were reached. These articles reveal the range of scholarship and reflection found in Rita M. Gross' work and demonstrate how feminist scholars in the 1970s shifted the paradigm away from an androcentric model of humanity and forever changed the way we study religion.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• I. INTRODUCTORY MATERIALS Introducing A Garland of Feminist Reflections
• 1. How Did This Ever Happen to Me? A Wisconsin Farm Girl Who Became a Buddhist Theologian When She Grew Up II. FIVE ESSAYS ON METHOD
• 2. Androcentrism and Androgyny in the Methodology of History of Religions
• 3. Where Have We Been? Where Do We Need to Go? Key Questions for Women Studies in Religion and Feminist Theology
• 4. The Place of the Personal and the Subjective in Religious Studies
• 5. Methodology: Tool or Trap? Comments from a Feminist Perspective
• 6. What Went Wrong? Feminism and Freedom from the Prison of Gender Roles III. THEORY APPLIED: THREE TESTS
• 7. Menstruation and Childbirth as Ritual and Religious Experience among Native Australians
• 8. Toward a New Model of the Hindu Pantheon: A Report on Twenty-Some Years of Feminist Reflection
• 9. The Prepatriarchal Hypothesis: An Assessment IV. FEMINIST THEOLOGY
• 10. Steps toward Feminine Imagery in Jewish Theology
• 11. Is the (Hindu) Goddess a Feminist?
• 12. Life-Giving Images in Vajrayana Buddhist Ritual
• 13. Feminist Theology as Theology of Religions V. BUDDHIST FEMINISM: FEMINIST BUDDHISM
• 14. The Clarity in the Anger
• 15. Why (Engaged) Buddhists Should Care about Gender Issues
• 16. The Dharma of Gender
• 17. Yeshe Tsogyel: Enlightened Consort, Great Teacher, Female Role Model
• 18. Buddhist Women and Teaching Authority
• 19. Is the Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full? A Feminist Assessment of Buddhism at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century
• 20. Being a North American Buddhist Woman: Reflections of a Feminist Pioneer Notes.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Rita M. Gross has long been acknowledged as a founder in the field of feminist theology. One of the earliest scholars in religious studies to discover how feminism affects that discipline, she is recognized as preeminent in Buddhist feminist theology. The essays in "A Garland of Feminist Reflections" represent the major aspects of her work and provide an overview of her methodology in women's studies in religion and feminism. The introductory article, written specifically for this volume, summarizes the conclusions Gross has reached about gender and feminism after forty years of searching and exploring, and the autobiography, also written for this volume, narrates how those conclusions were reached. These articles reveal the range of scholarship and reflection found in Rita M. Gross' work and demonstrate how feminist scholars in the 1970s shifted the paradigm away from an androcentric model of humanity and forever changed the way we study religion.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Drawing on historical, literary, and anthropological methodologies, Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World explores the meaning of an 'Atlantic community' and challenges the conventional boundaries of nation-bound inquiry in the humanities. The volume's contributors focus on European, indigenous, Creole, African, and mestiza women's interactions with shifting paradigms of Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, and syncretic beliefs throughout the Atlantic basin to highlight the unique cultural dynamics of the Atlantic. Mapping these themes with a diverse range of individual, imperial, and institutional cases, the essays include studies of a Peruvian nun's battle against a black demon, an African slave whose knowledge of the Bible stunned white men, and native American healers accused of witchcraft. Through a thoughtful consideration of the complexity of the religious landscape of the Atlantic basin, the collection provides an enriching portrayal of the intriguing interplay between religion, gender, ethnicity, and authority in the early modern Atlantic world.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Rethinking the Catholic Reformation : the role of women / Barbara B. Diefendorf
• The religious lives of singlewomen in the Anglo-Atlantic world : Quaker missionaries, Protestant nuns, and covert Catholics / Amy M. Froide
• Transatlantic ties : women's writings in Iberia and the Americas / Lisa Vollendorf
• Prophets and helpers : African American women and the rise of black Christianity in the age of the slave trade / Jon Sensbach
• 'The most resplendent flower of the Indies' : making saints and constructing whiteness in colonial Peru / Rachel Sarah O'Toole
• Missionary men and the global currency of female sanctity / J. Michelle Molina and Ulrike Strasser
• Patriarchs, petitions, and prayers : intersections of gender and Calidad in colonial Mexico / Joan Cameron Bristol
• Atlantic world monsters : monstrous births and the politics of pregnancy in colonial Guatemala / Martha Few
• A Judaizing 'old Christian' woman and the Mexican inquisition : the 'unusual' case of María de Zárate / Stacey Schlau
• A world of women and a world of men? : Pueblo witchcraft in eighteenth-century New Mexico / Tracy Brown
• The maidens, the monks, and their mothers : patriarchal authority and holy vows in colonial Lima, 1650-1715 / Bianca Premo.

Drawing on historical, literary, and anthropological methodologies, Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World explores the meaning of an 'Atlantic community' and challenges the conventional boundaries of nation-bound inquiry in the humanities. The volume's contributors focus on European, indigenous, Creole, African, and mestiza women's interactions with shifting paradigms of Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, and syncretic beliefs throughout the Atlantic basin to highlight the unique cultural dynamics of the Atlantic. Mapping these themes with a diverse range of individual, imperial, and institutional cases, the essays include studies of a Peruvian nun's battle against a black demon, an African slave whose knowledge of the Bible stunned white men, and native American healers accused of witchcraft. Through a thoughtful consideration of the complexity of the religious landscape of the Atlantic basin, the collection provides an enriching portrayal of the intriguing interplay between religion, gender, ethnicity, and authority in the early modern Atlantic world.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Italian holy women of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
• Elite women of the high Renaissance
• Women and the Reformation
• Holy women in the age of the Inquisition
• Post-Reformation currents.

The books in The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series chronicle the heretofore neglected stories of women between 1400 and 1700 with the aim of reviving scholarly interest in their thought as expressed in a full range of genres: treatises, orations, and history; lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry; novels and novellas; letters, biography, and autobiography; philosophy and science. "Teaching Other Voices: Women and Religion in Early Modern Europe" complements these rich volumes by identifying themes useful in literature, history, religion, women's studies, and introductory humanities courses. The volume's introduction, essays, and suggested course materials are intended as guides for teachers--but will serve the needs of students and scholars as well.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction: Integrating the worlds of women's religious experience in North America / Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether
• pt. 1. Approaches to the history of women and religion. Women and religion: methods of study and reflection / Rita M. Gross
• Religions and modern feminism / Ann Braude
• Gender and social roles / Susan Hill Lindley
• North American women interpret scripture / J. Shannon Clarkson and Letty M. Russell
• Women's religious imagination / Mary Farrell Bednarowski
• Social ethics, women, and religion / Marilyn J. Legge
• The psychology of women's religious experience / Ann Belford Ulanov
• Women's spiritual biography and autobiography / Rosemary Skinner Keller
• pt. 2. Women in indigenous and African traditions. Native American creation stories / Laura Adams Weaver
• Native American women and Christianity / Kim Stone
• American Indian boarding schools / Andrea Smith
• Appropriation of Native American religious traditions / Andrea Smith
• Religious exchange in Aframerindian life / Patrick Neal Minges
• Women in African Caribbean religious traditions / Dianne M. Stewart
• pt. 3. Catholicism. Women in North American Catholicism / Rosemary Radford Ruether
• Religious women in colonial Mexico / Kathleen Ann Myers
• Godmothers and goddaughters: Catholic women in colonial New France and New England / Lisa J.M. Poirier
• American Catholic women, 1820-1900: from the Jacksonian period to the progressive era / Holly Folk
• African American Catholic women / Cecilia A. Moore
• Latina popular Catholicism / Jeanette Rodriguez
• Asian and Pacific American Catholic women / Jocelyn M. Eclarin Azada
• American Catholic women, 1900-1965 / Debra Campbell
• American Catholic women since Vatican Council II / Mary Jo Weaver
• Determined builders, powerful voices: women and Catholicism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Quebec and Canada / Carolyn Sharp
• pt. 4. Protestantism. Colonial period. Women and Protestantism in colonial New England / Rebecca Larson
• Protestant women in the Mid-Atlantic colonies / Alison Duncan Hirsch
• Southern colonial Protestant women / Cynthia Lynn Lyerly
• Protestantism in British North America (Canada) / Marilyn Färdig Whiteley
• Denominational traditions. Women and African American denominations / Sandy Dwayne Martin
• Women of Anabaptist traditions / Marlene Epp
• Women in the American Episcopal Church / Fredrica Harris Thompsett
• Women in the Anglican Church in Canada / Sharon Anne Cook
• Baptist women / Carolyn D. Blevins
• Christian Church/Disciples of Christ tradition and women / Loretta M. Long
• Women and Lutheranism / Mary Todd
• Methodist women / Jean Miller Schmidt and Sara J. Myers
• Quaker women in North America / Mary Van Vleck Garman
• Women in Reformed churches / Rebecca Button Prichard
• Presbyterian women in America / Lois A. Boyd
• Women in the United Church of Canada / Phyllis D. Airhart
• Women in the United Church of Christ / Barbara Brown Zikmund
• Women in the Unitarian Universalist movement / Cynthia Grant Tucker.

• Evangelical Protestantism. Women in Pentecostalism / Edith Blumhofer
• Women in the Salvation Army / Diane Winston
• Revivalism / Priscilla Pope-Levison
• Holiness movements / Nancy A. Hardesty
• Sanctified Church(es) / Cheryl Townsend Gilkes
• Fundamentalism / Margaret L. Bendroth
• America's evangelical women: more than wives and mothers: reformers, ministers, and leaders / Jane Harris
• Charismatic movement / R. Marie Griffith
• Euro-American evangelical feminism / Reta Halteman Finger and S. Sue Horner
• Hispanic Protestantism. U.S. Latina evangélicas / Elizabeth Conde-Frazier and Loida I. Martell Otero
• Race and gender in Latina experience / Teresa Chávez Sauceda
• Hispanic Pentecostal women / Gastón Espinosa
• Asian Protestantism. Asian Pacific American Protestant women / Rita Nakashima Brock and Nami Kim
• pt. 5. Women in Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox traditions. Women in Orthodox Christian traditions / Demetra Velisarios Jaquet
• Oriental Orthodox traditions and the Armenian Apostolic Church / Barbara J. Merguerian
• An orthodox perspective on feminist theology / Valerie A. Karras
• pt. 6. Judaism. Reform Judaism / Karla Goldman
• Tradition and change: finding the right balance: Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism / Shuly Rubin Schwartz
• Orthodox Jewish women in America: diversity, challenges, and coming of age / Blu Greenberg
• Jewish women and ritual / Hasia R. Diner
• Jewish law and gender / Norma Baumel Joseph
• Anti-Semitism / Riv-Ellen Prell
• pt. 7. Islam. Islam, women, and the struggle for identity in North America / Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad
• African American Muslim women / Aminah Beverly McCloud
• Women, Islam, and mosques / Ingrid Mattson
• Women's issues in American Islam / Jane I. Smith
• pt. 8. Asian religions. Buddhism. Origins of Buddhism in North America / Lori Pierce
• Women and Zen Buddhisms: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese / Miriam Levering and Grace Jill Schireson
• The way of the elders: Theravada Buddhism, including the Vipassana movement / Sandy Boucher
• Tibetan Buddhism / Amy Lavine
• Hinduism. Hinduism in North America including emerging issues / Vasudha Narayanan
• New Hindu movements / Kathleen M. Erndl
• Chinese religions. Religions of Chinese immigrant communities and Chinese religions practiced in North America by non-Chinese people / Vivian-Lee Nyitray
• Japanese religions. Religions of Japanese immigrants and Japanese American communities / Ruth M. Tabrah
• Other religions. Women and Jainism in North America / Anne Vallely
• Sikh women in North America / Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh.

• pt. 9. Newer religious movements. Women in communitarian societies / Rosemary Radford Ruether
• Mormon women / Claudia L. Bushman
• Women in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints / Rita M. Lester
• Vodou, spiritism, and Santería: hybridity and identity in Caribbean religions / Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi
• Christian Science / Sarah Gardner Cunningham
• Clara Evans Muhammad: pioneering social activism in the original Nation of Islam / Debra Mubashir Majeed
• Theosophy, New Thought, and New Age movements / Catherine Wessinger, Dell deChant, and William Michael Ashcraft
• Spiritualism / Cathy Gutierrez
• Women in the North American Baha'i community / Sandra Hutchinson and Richard Hollinger
• Women in new religious movements since the 1960s / Susan J. Palmer
• Women in Jewish renewal / Reena Sigman Friedman
• Ancient matriarchies in nineteenth- and twentieth-century feminist thought / Cynthia Eller
• Women in the Wiccan religion and contemporary paganism / Selena Fox
• pt. 10. Multidenominational movements. The Deaconess movement / Cynthia A. Jurisson
• Missionary movement. Protestant women missionaries: foreign and home / Dana L. Robert
• American Catholic women missionaries: 1870-2000 / Angelyn Dries
• Women's societies. Leadership and community building in Protestant women's organizations / Rosemary Skinner Keller
• "Lifting as we climb": National Association of Colored Women (NACW) / National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) / Marcia Y. Riggs
• Religious education. Women and catechetics in the Roman Catholic tradition / Mary L. Putrow
• Catholic women's colleges in the United States / Tracy Schier
• Conservative Christian strategies in education / James C. Carper and Brian D. Ray
• Women and Jewish education / David E. Kaufman
• Protestant Sunday schools and religious education / Virginia Lieson Brereton
• Protestant women's colleges in the United States / Kathleen S. Hurty
• Women in theological education / Jeanne P. McLean
• When women enter the classroom: theory, theology, and teaching / Barbara J. Blodgett
• The ordination movement. Protestant women's ordination movement / Barbara Brown Zikmund
• The women's ordination movement in the Roman Catholic Church / Maureen Fiedler and Dolly Pomerleau
• Jewish women's ordination / Pamela S. Nadell
• Protestant female preaching in the United States / Catherine A. Brekus
• Music and the arts. Women hymn writers / Edith Blumhofer
• African American hymnody / Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan
• Women's novels and religion, 1780-1900 / Diane Capitani
• Women, religion, and American film / Judith Weisenfeld.

• pt. 11. Women, religion, and social reform. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestant social reform movements in the United States / Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford
• Antislavery, abolitionism / Anna M. Speicher
• Women and peace movements in North America / Valarie Ziegler
• Settlement House movement / Eleanor J. Stebner
• Social Gospel / Susan Hill Lindley
• Women and Garveyism / Anthea D. Butler
• Civil rights movement / Rosetta E. Ross
• Engaged Buddhist women / Judith Simmer-Brown
• Women's freedom and reproductive rights: the core fear of patriarchy / Frances Kissling
• Ecofeminism / Heather Eaton
• Jewish women's service organizations / Dianne Ashton
• Abundant life for all: the Young Women's Christian Association / Janine M. Denomme
• Women and religion in the borderlands / Daisy L. Machado
• Turning off the taps: public policy in Canada / Lois M. Wilson
• The public leadership of women of faith: entrepreneurs, social alchemists, and bearers of religion in the world / Katharine R. Henderson
• pt. 12. Women-centered theology. Womanist theology / Emilie M. Townes
• Euro-American feminist theology / Lucy Tatman
• Las Hermanas: Latinas and religious / political activism / Lara Medina
• Mujerista theology / Ada María Isasi-Díaz
• Latina Roman Catholic theologies / Nancy Pineda-Madrid
• Rebirth of the religion of the goddess / Carol P. Christ
• Women's issues in contemporary North American Buddhism / Rita M. Gross
• Lesbian and bisexual Issues in religion / Mary E. Hunt
• Jewish feminism / Judith Plaskow
• The case for native liberation theology / Andrea Smith
• pt. 13. Contemporary women's issues in religion. Women-church / Mary E. Hunt
• New feminist ritual / Janet Walton
• Women and healing in North America / Susan M. Setta
• Women in Protestant church societies and bureaucracies / Susan M. Hartmann
• Plural religious identities and households / Rita DasGupta Sherma
• Women's contributions to Jewish-Christian relations / Mary C. Boys
• Canadian women's religious issues / Tracy J. Trothen
• Inclusive language / Susan Thistlewaite
• New religious right / Laura R. Olson
• Sexuality and the Black church / Kelly Brown Douglas
• Girlfriend theology: adolescent girls and faith communities / Dori Grinenko Baker.

The Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America harvests the fruits of 25 years of scholarship on the history and current state of women's religious experience in North America. The result of a five-year project led by Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether and funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Henry Luce Foundation, the encyclopedia marshals the talents of more than 150 scholars to produce the most comprehensive and up-to-date description and analysis of women and religion in North America. The encyclopedia is interreligious, interracial, and multicultural and is aimed at a broad general audience. Instead of hundreds of short entries, this encyclopedia features more than 145 longer essays that enable major themes to be developed more fully. The articles focus on institutions, movements, and ideas. The authors weave biographical sketches into their articles to give them a more personal and humanizing quality, and to recognize the women responsible for the gains made over the centuries. The essays demonstrate that neither the story of women nor the story of religion in North America can be accurately told unless the religious experience of women is integrated into the center of women's and religious history. These well-illustrated volumes will be an essential reference for all of those interested in the role of women in North America's vibrant and complex religious life.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction: Integrating the worlds of women's religious experience in North America / Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether
• pt. 1. Approaches to the history of women and religion. Women and religion: methods of study and reflection / Rita M. Gross
• Religions and modern feminism / Ann Braude
• Gender and social roles / Susan Hill Lindley
• North American women interpret scripture / J. Shannon Clarkson and Letty M. Russell
• Women's religious imagination / Mary Farrell Bednarowski
• Social ethics, women, and religion / Marilyn J. Legge
• The psychology of women's religious experience / Ann Belford Ulanov
• Women's spiritual biography and autobiography / Rosemary Skinner Keller
• pt. 2. Women in indigenous and African traditions. Native American creation stories / Laura Adams Weaver
• Native American women and Christianity / Kim Stone
• American Indian boarding schools / Andrea Smith
• Appropriation of Native American religious traditions / Andrea Smith
• Religious exchange in Aframerindian life / Patrick Neal Minges
• Women in African Caribbean religious traditions / Dianne M. Stewart
• pt. 3. Catholicism. Women in North American Catholicism / Rosemary Radford Ruether
• Religious women in colonial Mexico / Kathleen Ann Myers
• Godmothers and goddaughters: Catholic women in colonial New France and New England / Lisa J.M. Poirier
• American Catholic women, 1820-1900: from the Jacksonian period to the progressive era / Holly Folk
• African American Catholic women / Cecilia A. Moore
• Latina popular Catholicism / Jeanette Rodriguez
• Asian and Pacific American Catholic women / Jocelyn M. Eclarin Azada
• American Catholic women, 1900-1965 / Debra Campbell
• American Catholic women since Vatican Council II / Mary Jo Weaver
• Determined builders, powerful voices: women and Catholicism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Quebec and Canada / Carolyn Sharp
• pt. 4. Protestantism. Colonial period. Women and Protestantism in colonial New England / Rebecca Larson
• Protestant women in the Mid-Atlantic colonies / Alison Duncan Hirsch
• Southern colonial Protestant women / Cynthia Lynn Lyerly
• Protestantism in British North America (Canada) / Marilyn Färdig Whiteley
• Denominational traditions. Women and African American denominations / Sandy Dwayne Martin
• Women of Anabaptist traditions / Marlene Epp
• Women in the American Episcopal Church / Fredrica Harris Thompsett
• Women in the Anglican Church in Canada / Sharon Anne Cook
• Baptist women / Carolyn D. Blevins
• Christian Church/Disciples of Christ tradition and women / Loretta M. Long
• Women and Lutheranism / Mary Todd
• Methodist women / Jean Miller Schmidt and Sara J. Myers
• Quaker women in North America / Mary Van Vleck Garman
• Women in Reformed churches / Rebecca Button Prichard
• Presbyterian women in America / Lois A. Boyd
• Women in the United Church of Canada / Phyllis D. Airhart
• Women in the United Church of Christ / Barbara Brown Zikmund
• Women in the Unitarian Universalist movement / Cynthia Grant Tucker

• Evangelical Protestantism. Women in Pentecostalism / Edith Blumhofer
• Women in the Salvation Army / Diane Winston
• Revivalism / Priscilla Pope-Levison
• Holiness movements / Nancy A. Hardesty
• Sanctified Church(es) / Cheryl Townsend Gilkes
• Fundamentalism / Margaret L. Bendroth
• America's evangelical women: more than wives and mothers: reformers, ministers, and leaders / Jane Harris
• Charismatic movement / R. Marie Griffith
• Euro-American evangelical feminism / Reta Halteman Finger and S. Sue Horner
• Hispanic Protestantism. U.S. Latina evangélicas / Elizabeth Conde-Frazier and Loida I. Martell Otero
• Race and gender in Latina experience / Teresa Chávez Sauceda
• Hispanic Pentecostal women / Gastón Espinosa
• Asian Protestantism. Asian Pacific American Protestant women / Rita Nakashima Brock and Nami Kim
• pt. 5. Women in Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox traditions. Women in Orthodox Christian traditions / Demetra Velisarios Jaquet
• Oriental Orthodox traditions and the Armenian Apostolic Church / Barbara J. Merguerian
• An orthodox perspective on feminist theology / Valerie A. Karras
• pt. 6. Judaism. Reform Judaism / Karla Goldman
• Tradition and change: finding the right balance: Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism / Shuly Rubin Schwartz
• Orthodox Jewish women in America: diversity, challenges, and coming of age / Blu Greenberg
• Jewish women and ritual / Hasia R. Diner
• Jewish law and gender / Norma Baumel Joseph
• Anti-Semitism / Riv-Ellen Prell
• pt. 7. Islam. Islam, women, and the struggle for identity in North America / Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad
• African American Muslim women / Aminah Beverly McCloud
• Women, Islam, and mosques / Ingrid Mattson
• Women's issues in American Islam / Jane I. Smith
• pt. 8. Asian religions. Buddhism. Origins of Buddhism in North America / Lori Pierce
• Women and Zen Buddhisms: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese / Miriam Levering and Grace Jill Schireson
• The way of the elders: Theravada Buddhism, including the Vipassana movement / Sandy Boucher
• Tibetan Buddhism / Amy Lavine
• Hinduism. Hinduism in North America including emerging issues / Vasudha Narayanan
• New Hindu movements / Kathleen M. Erndl
• Chinese religions. Religions of Chinese immigrant communities and Chinese religions practiced in North America by non-Chinese people / Vivian-Lee Nyitray
• Japanese religions. Religions of Japanese immigrants and Japanese American communities / Ruth M. Tabrah
• Other religions. Women and Jainism in North America / Anne Vallely
• Sikh women in North America / Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh

• pt. 9. Newer religious movements. Women in communitarian societies / Rosemary Radford Ruether
• Mormon women / Claudia L. Bushman
• Women in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints / Rita M. Lester
• Vodou, spiritism, and Santería: hybridity and identity in Caribbean religions / Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi
• Christian Science / Sarah Gardner Cunningham
• Clara Evans Muhammad: pioneering social activism in the original Nation of Islam / Debra Mubashir Majeed
• Theosophy, New Thought, and New Age movements / Catherine Wessinger, Dell deChant, and William Michael Ashcraft
• Spiritualism / Cathy Gutierrez
• Women in the North American Baha'i community / Sandra Hutchinson and Richard Hollinger
• Women in new religious movements since the 1960s / Susan J. Palmer
• Women in Jewish renewal / Reena Sigman Friedman
• Ancient matriarchies in nineteenth- and twentieth-century feminist thought / Cynthia Eller
• Women in the Wiccan religion and contemporary paganism / Selena Fox
• pt. 10. Multidenominational movements. The Deaconess movement / Cynthia A. Jurisson
• Missionary movement. Protestant women missionaries: foreign and home / Dana L. Robert
• American Catholic women missionaries: 1870-2000 / Angelyn Dries
• Women's societies. Leadership and community building in Protestant women's organizations / Rosemary Skinner Keller
• "Lifting as we climb": National Association of Colored Women (NACW) / National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) / Marcia Y. Riggs
• Religious education. Women and catechetics in the Roman Catholic tradition / Mary L. Putrow
• Catholic women's colleges in the United States / Tracy Schier
• Conservative Christian strategies in education / James C. Carper and Brian D. Ray
• Women and Jewish education / David E. Kaufman
• Protestant Sunday schools and religious education / Virginia Lieson Brereton
• Protestant women's colleges in the United States / Kathleen S. Hurty
• Women in theological education / Jeanne P. McLean
• When women enter the classroom: theory, theology, and teaching / Barbara J. Blodgett
• The ordination movement. Protestant women's ordination movement / Barbara Brown Zikmund
• The women's ordination movement in the Roman Catholic Church / Maureen Fiedler and Dolly Pomerleau
• Jewish women's ordination / Pamela S. Nadell
• Protestant female preaching in the United States / Catherine A. Brekus
• Music and the arts. Women hymn writers / Edith Blumhofer
• African American hymnody / Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan
• Women's novels and religion, 1780-1900 / Diane Capitani
• Women, religion, and American film / Judith Weisenfeld

• pt. 11. Women, religion, and social reform. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestant social reform movements in the United States / Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford
• Antislavery, abolitionism / Anna M. Speicher
• Women and peace movements in North America / Valarie Ziegler
• Settlement House movement / Eleanor J. Stebner
• Social Gospel / Susan Hill Lindley
• Women and Garveyism / Anthea D. Butler
• Civil rights movement / Rosetta E. Ross
• Engaged Buddhist women / Judith Simmer-Brown
• Women's freedom and reproductive rights: the core fear of patriarchy / Frances Kissling
• Ecofeminism / Heather Eaton
• Jewish women's service organizations / Dianne Ashton
• Abundant life for all: the Young Women's Christian Association / Janine M. Denomme
• Women and religion in the borderlands / Daisy L. Machado
• Turning off the taps: public policy in Canada / Lois M. Wilson
• The public leadership of women of faith: entrepreneurs, social alchemists, and bearers of religion in the world / Katharine R. Henderson
• pt. 12. Women-centered theology. Womanist theology / Emilie M. Townes
• Euro-American feminist theology / Lucy Tatman
• Las Hermanas: Latinas and religious / political activism / Lara Medina
• Mujerista theology / Ada María Isasi-Díaz
• Latina Roman Catholic theologies / Nancy Pineda-Madrid
• Rebirth of the religion of the goddess / Carol P. Christ
• Women's issues in contemporary North American Buddhism / Rita M. Gross
• Lesbian and bisexual Issues in religion / Mary E. Hunt
• Jewish feminism / Judith Plaskow
• The case for native liberation theology / Andrea Smith
• pt. 13. Contemporary women's issues in religion. Women-church / Mary E. Hunt
• New feminist ritual / Janet Walton
• Women and healing in North America / Susan M. Setta
• Women in Protestant church societies and bureaucracies / Susan M. Hartmann
• Plural religious identities and households / Rita DasGupta Sherma
• Women's contributions to Jewish-Christian relations / Mary C. Boys
• Canadian women's religious issues / Tracy J. Trothen
• Inclusive language / Susan Thistlewaite
• New religious right / Laura R. Olson
• Sexuality and the Black church / Kelly Brown Douglas
• Girlfriend theology: adolescent girls and faith communities / Dori Grinenko Baker.

The Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America harvests the fruits of 25 years of scholarship on the history and current state of women's religious experience in North America. The result of a five-year project led by Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether and funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Henry Luce Foundation, the encyclopedia marshals the talents of more than 150 scholars to produce the most comprehensive and up-to-date description and analysis of women and religion in North America. The encyclopedia is interreligious, interracial, and multicultural and is aimed at a broad general audience. Instead of hundreds of short entries, this encyclopedia features more than 145 longer essays that enable major themes to be developed more fully. The articles focus on institutions, movements, and ideas. The authors weave biographical sketches into their articles to give them a more personal and humanizing quality, and to recognize the women responsible for the gains made over the centuries. The essays demonstrate that neither the story of women nor the story of religion in North America can be accurately told unless the religious experience of women is integrated into the center of women's and religious history. These well-illustrated volumes will be an essential reference for all of those interested in the role of women in North America's vibrant and complex religious life.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 CHAPTER ONE: Women and Origins in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages 7 CHAPTER TWO: Writing Women Out: Amazons and Barbarians 26 CHAPTER THREE: A Tale of Two Judiths 43 CHAPTER FOUR: Writing Women In: Sacred Genealogy and Gender 60 EPILOGUE: Women at the End 76 Notes 79 Suggestions for Further Reading 99 Index 101.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In these four artfully crafted essays, Patrick Geary explores the way ancient and medieval authors wrote about women. Geary describes the often marginal role women played in origin legends from antiquity until the twelfth century. Not confining himself to one religious tradition or region, he probes the tensions between women in biblical, classical, and medieval myths (such as Eve, Mary, Amazons, princesses, and countesses), and actual women in ancient and medieval societies. Using these legends as a lens through which to study patriarchal societies, Geary chooses moments and texts that illustrate how ancient authors (all of whom were male) confronted the place of women in their society. Unlike other books on the subject, Women at the Beginning attempts to understand not only the place of women in these legends, but also the ideologies of the men who wrote about them. The book concludes that the authors of these stories were themselves struggling with ambivalence about women in their own worlds and that this struggle manifested itself in their writings.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 CHAPTER ONE: Women and Origins in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages 7 CHAPTER TWO: Writing Women Out: Amazons and Barbarians 26 CHAPTER THREE: A Tale of Two Judiths 43 CHAPTER FOUR: Writing Women In: Sacred Genealogy and Gender 60 EPILOGUE: Women at the End 76 Notes 79 Suggestions for Further Reading 99 Index 101.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In these four artfully crafted essays, Patrick Geary explores the way ancient and medieval authors wrote about women. Geary describes the often marginal role women played in origin legends from antiquity until the twelfth century. Not confining himself to one religious tradition or region, he probes the tensions between women in biblical, classical, and medieval myths (such as Eve, Mary, Amazons, princesses, and countesses), and actual women in ancient and medieval societies. Using these legends as a lens through which to study patriarchal societies, Geary chooses moments and texts that illustrate how ancient authors (all of whom were male) confronted the place of women in their society. Unlike other books on the subject, Women at the Beginning attempts to understand not only the place of women in these legends, but also the ideologies of the men who wrote about them. The book concludes that the authors of these stories were themselves struggling with ambivalence about women in their own worlds and that this struggle manifested itself in their writings.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction
• Literary evidence
• Women in the epigraphic record
• The evidence of votive deposits
• Household ritual
• Social status and religious participation
• Conclusion.

Expanding the discussion of religious participation of women in ancient Rome, Celia E. Schultz demonstrates that in addition to observances of marriage, fertility, and childbirth, there were more - and more important - religious opportunities available to Roman women than are commonly considered. Based on research in ancient literature, inscriptions, and archaeological remains from the fifth to the first century B.C.E., Schultz's study shows that women honored gods unaffiliated with domestic matters, including Hercules and Jupiter; they took part in commercial, military, and political rites; they often worshipped alongside men; and they were not confined to the private sphere, the traditional domain of women. The Vestal Virgins did not stand alone but were instead the most prominent members of a group of women who held high-profile religious positions: priestesses of Ceres, Liber, and Venus; the flaminica Dialis and the regina sacrorum; other cult officials; and aristocratic matrons who often took leading roles in religious observances even though they were not priestesses. Schultz argues that women were vital participants - both professional and nonprofessional - in the religion of the Roman Republic and that social and marital status, in addition to gender, were important factors in determining their opportunities for religious participation in the public sphere.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Goddesses and Women in the Indic Religious Tradition goes beyond the traditional sources that lie at the basis for determining the position of goddesses and women in India. Following the lead of a "hermeneutics of surprise" the book identifies, indeed, surprising new material - and conclusions; for example the analysis of Vedic Srauta ritual. Or by offering surprising conclusions, when the location is obviously one involving women and goddesses, or anthropology discovers that the worship of the Great Goddess temporarily elevates the position of women. Other examples of the effectivity of the "hermeneutics of surprise" are seen when applied to the role of dakinis, Sakti worship, the Marathi Sant tradition, and to Sankara's commentaries.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Preface Abbreviations Maps Introduction
• 1. CLAIMING A HOMELAND Three Landscapes Using the Land Space and Community Genealogy and Gendered Landscapes
• 2. RITUAL SPACE Drawing the Boundaries between Human and Divine Discovering Sacred Space and Creating Ritual Space Mapping the Urban Community Hierarchies of Sacred Space
• 3. INVENTING THE CENTER Regional Sanctuaries Finding the Center Civic Centrality Ritual Narratives of Centrality and Judicial Success
• 4. THE RITUAL BODY Hebe's Hens and Herakles' Roosters "Women, Dogs, and Flies" Body Language and Ritual Gesture " I Write the Oaths of a Woman in Water" Serving the Gods The Delphic Bee
• 5. THE PLAGUE OF INFERTILITY Male Reproductive Anxiety Bodies of Water and Miniature Landscapes Body Parts Sterility and the Crisis of Paternity
• 6. LANDSCAPES OF ARTEMIS Borderlands Typologies of Sacred Space Turning Points Boundaries and Combat Epiphany and Crisis The Lay of the Land Unifying Center and Borderland
• 7. DOMESTICATING ARTEMIS At the Margins The Anger of Artemis The Cycle of Reproduction Inscribing Civic Success The Naked and the Clothed Permanent Press Glossary of Greek Terms Bibliography Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The division of land and consolidation of territory that created the Greek polis also divided sacred from productive space, sharpened distinctions between purity and pollution, and created a ritual system premised on gender difference. Regional sanctuaries ameliorated competition between city-states, publicized the results of competitive rituals for males, and encouraged judicial alternatives to violence. Female ritual efforts, focused on reproduction and the health of the family, are less visible, but, as this provocative study shows, no less significant. Taking a fresh look at the epigraphical evidence for Greek ritual practice in the context of recent studies of landscape and political organization, Susan Guettel Cole illuminates the profoundly gendered nature of Greek cult practice and explains the connections between female rituals and the integrity of the community. In a rich integration of ancient sources and current theory, Cole brings together the complex evidence for Greek ritual practice. She discusses relevant medical and philosophical theories about the female body; considers Greek ideas about purity, pollution, and ritual purification; and examines the cult of Artemis in detail. Her nuanced study demonstrates the social contribution of women's rituals to the sustenance of the polis and the identity of its people.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Preface Abbreviations Maps Introduction
• 1. CLAIMING A HOMELAND Three Landscapes Using the Land Space and Community Genealogy and Gendered Landscapes
• 2. RITUAL SPACE Drawing the Boundaries between Human and Divine Discovering Sacred Space and Creating Ritual Space Mapping the Urban Community Hierarchies of Sacred Space
• 3. INVENTING THE CENTER Regional Sanctuaries Finding the Center Civic Centrality Ritual Narratives of Centrality and Judicial Success
• 4. THE RITUAL BODY Hebe's Hens and Herakles' Roosters "Women, Dogs, and Flies" Body Language and Ritual Gesture " I Write the Oaths of a Woman in Water" Serving the Gods The Delphic Bee
• 5. THE PLAGUE OF INFERTILITY Male Reproductive Anxiety Bodies of Water and Miniature Landscapes Body Parts Sterility and the Crisis of Paternity
• 6. LANDSCAPES OF ARTEMIS Borderlands Typologies of Sacred Space Turning Points Boundaries and Combat Epiphany and Crisis The Lay of the Land Unifying Center and Borderland
• 7. DOMESTICATING ARTEMIS At the Margins The Anger of Artemis The Cycle of Reproduction Inscribing Civic Success The Naked and the Clothed Permanent Press Glossary of Greek Terms Bibliography Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The division of land and consolidation of territory that created the Greek polis also divided sacred from productive space, sharpened distinctions between purity and pollution, and created a ritual system premised on gender difference. Regional sanctuaries ameliorated competition between city-states, publicized the results of competitive rituals for males, and encouraged judicial alternatives to violence. Female ritual efforts, focused on reproduction and the health of the family, are less visible, but, as this provocative study shows, no less significant. Taking a fresh look at the epigraphical evidence for Greek ritual practice in the context of recent studies of landscape and political organization, Susan Guettel Cole illuminates the profoundly gendered nature of Greek cult practice and explains the connections between female rituals and the integrity of the community. In a rich integration of ancient sources and current theory, Cole brings together the complex evidence for Greek ritual practice. She discusses relevant medical and philosophical theories about the female body; considers Greek ideas about purity, pollution, and ritual purification; and examines the cult of Artemis in detail. Her nuanced study demonstrates the social contribution of women's rituals to the sustenance of the polis and the identity of its people.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Women and miracle stories: introduction / Anne-Marie Korte
• Magic, miracle and miracle workers in the Acts of Thecla / Magda Misset-van de Weg
• Fatherly and motherly curing in sixth-century Gaul: Saint Radegund's Mysterium / Giselle de Nie
• Women in Columba's life, as seen through the eyes of his biographer Adomnán / Jacqueline Borsje
• Fresh water for a tired soul: pregnancy and messianic desire in a mediaeval Jewish document from Sicily / Marcel Poorthuis & Chana Safrai
• The life of Christina Mirabilis: miracles and the construction of marginality / Anke E. Passenier
• In pain you shall bear children (Gen 3:16): medieval prayers for a safe delivery / Marianne Elsakkers
• A woman alone: the beatification of Friederike Hauffe née Wanner (1801-1829) / Wouter J. Hanegraaff
• Māriyamman̲'s Śakti: the miraculous power of a smallpox goddess / Anne van Voorthuizen
• Women and miracles in the stories of Ingeborg Bachmann / Ilse N. Bulhof
• Miracles of desire: transfigurations in Rhoda Lerman's The book of the night / Inez van der Spek
• A different grace: epilogue / Anne-Marie Korte.

This book contains a multidisciplinary collection of studies on women in miracle stories found in texts ranging from religious classics to contemporary literary fiction. By including research on miracle stories in contemporary fiction written by women this book also wants to acknowledge and research the disputed status of 'miracles' as well of 'women' in our present society which is moving from modernity to post-modernity. Please note that Women and Miracle Stories is previously published by Brill in hardback (ISBN 90 04 16681 8, still available).
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Contents; Abbreviations; Introduction; ONE: Observances, Rituals, and Festivals;
• 1. Why Women Are Compelled to Worship Dionysos: EURIPIDES Bacchae 23-42;
• 2. The Rites of the First Bacchic Worshipers: EURIPIDES Bacchae 677-768;
• 3. Women Worshipers of a Dionysian Deity, Sabos: DEMOSTHENES On the Crown 259-60;
• 4. Rituals for Brides and Pregnant Women in the Worship of Artemis: LSCG Suppl. 115;
• 5. Objects Dedicated to Artemis Brauronia IG II[sup(2)] 1514;
• 6. Women Participants at a Festival of Adonis: THEOCRITUS Idyll 15, 95-149;
• 7. Ritual Regulations in a Dionysiac Thiasos: LSAM 48.

This is a substantially expanded and completely revised edition of a book originally published in 1988 as Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics. The book is a collection of translations of primary texts relevant to women's religion in Western antiquity, from the fourth century BCE to the fifth century CE. The selections are taken from from the plethora of ancient religions, including Judaism and Christianity, and are translated from the six major languages of the Greco-Roman world: Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Coptic. The texts are grouped thematically in six sections: Observances, Rituals, and Festivals; Researching Real Women: Documents to, from and by Women; Religious Office; New Religious Affiliation and Conversion; Holy, Pious, and Exemplary Women; and The Feminine Divine. Women's Religions in the Greco-Roman World provides a unique and invaluable resource for scholars of classical antiquity, early Christianity and Judaism, and women's religion more generally.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

This is a substantially expanded and completely revised edition of a book originally published in 1988 as Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics. The book is a collection of translations of primary texts relevant to women's religion in Western antiquity, from the fourth century BCE to the fifth century CE. The selections are taken from from the plethora of ancient religions, including Judaism and Christianity, and are translated from the six major languages of the Greco-Roman world: Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Coptic. The texts are grouped thematically in six sections: Observances, Rituals, and Festivals; Researching Real Women: Documents to, from and by Women; Religious Office; New Religious Affiliation and Conversion; Holy, Pious, and Exemplary Women; and The Feminine Divine. Women's Religions in the Greco-Roman World provides a unique and invaluable resource for scholars of classical antiquity, early Christianity and Judaism, and women's religion more generally.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

This is a substantially expanded and completely revised edition of a book originally published in 1988 as Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics. The book is a collection of translations of primary texts relevant to women's religion in Western antiquity, from the fourth century BCE to the fifth century CE. The selections are taken from from the plethora of ancient religions, including Judaism and Christianity, and are translated from the six major languages of the Greco-Roman world: Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Coptic. The texts are grouped thematically in six sections: Observances, Rituals, and Festivals; Researching Real Women: Documents to, from and by Women; Religious Office; New Religious Affiliation and Conversion; Holy, Pious, and Exemplary Women; and The Feminine Divine. Women's Religions in the Greco-Roman World provides a unique and invaluable resource for scholars of classical antiquity, early Christianity and Judaism, and women's religion more generally.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Contents: The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession Introduction
• Part 1: Re-Orienting Possession in Theory Chapter One: Signifying Possession Chapter Two: Re-Orienting Possession Chapter Three: Flutes, Hammers and Mounted Women Part II: The Work, War and Play of Possession Chapter Four: Work Chapter Five: War Chapter Six: Play(s) Conclusion Bibliography.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Feminist theory and postcolonial theory share an interest in developing theoretical frameworks for describing and evaluating subjectivity comparatively, especially with regard to non-autonomous models of agency. As a historian of religions, Mary Keller uses the figure of the "possessed woman" to analyze a subject that is spoken-through rather than speaking and whose will is the will of the ancestor, deity or spirit that wields her to engage the question of agency in a culturally and historically comparative study that recognizes the prominent role possessed women play in their respective traditions. Drawing from the fields of anthropology and comparative psychology, Keller brings the figure of the possessed woman into the heart of contemporary argument as an exemplary model that challenges many Western and feminist assumptions regarding agency. Proposing a new theoretical framework that re-orients scholarship, Keller argues that the subject who is wielded or played, the hammer or the flute, exercises a paradoxical authority-"instrumental agency"-born of their radical receptivity: their power derives from the communities' assessment that they no longer exist as autonomous agents. For Keller, the possessed woman is at once "hammer" and "flute, " paradoxically powerful because she has become an instrument of the overpowering will of an ancestor, deity, or spirit. Keller applies the concept of instrumental agency to case studies, providing a new interpretation of each. She begins with contemporary possessions in Malaysia, where women in manufacturing plants were seized by spirits seeking to resacralize the territory. She next looks to wartime Zimbabwe, where female spirit mediums, the Nehanda mhondoro, declared the ancestors' will to fight against colonialism. Finally she provides an imaginative rereading of the performative power of possession by interpreting two plays, Euripides' Bacchae and S. Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, which feature possessed women as central characters. This book can serve as an excellent introduction to postcolonial and feminist theory for graduate students, while grounding its theory in the analysis of regionally and historically specific moments of time that will be of interest to specialists. It also provides an argument for the evaluation of religious lives and their struggles for meaning and power in the contemporary landscape of critical theory.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Contents: The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession Introduction
• Part 1: Re-Orienting Possession in Theory Chapter One: Signifying Possession Chapter Two: Re-Orienting Possession Chapter Three: Flutes, Hammers and Mounted Women Part II: The Work, War and Play of Possession Chapter Four: Work Chapter Five: War Chapter Six: Play(s) Conclusion Bibliography.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Feminist theory and postcolonial theory share an interest in developing theoretical frameworks for describing and evaluating subjectivity comparatively, especially with regard to non-autonomous models of agency. As a historian of religions, Mary Keller uses the figure of the "possessed woman" to analyze a subject that is spoken-through rather than speaking and whose will is the will of the ancestor, deity or spirit that wields her to engage the question of agency in a culturally and historically comparative study that recognizes the prominent role possessed women play in their respective traditions. Drawing from the fields of anthropology and comparative psychology, Keller brings the figure of the possessed woman into the heart of contemporary argument as an exemplary model that challenges many Western and feminist assumptions regarding agency. Proposing a new theoretical framework that re-orients scholarship, Keller argues that the subject who is wielded or played, the hammer or the flute, exercises a paradoxical authority-"instrumental agency"-born of their radical receptivity: their power derives from the communities' assessment that they no longer exist as autonomous agents. For Keller, the possessed woman is at once "hammer" and "flute, " paradoxically powerful because she has become an instrument of the overpowering will of an ancestor, deity, or spirit. Keller applies the concept of instrumental agency to case studies, providing a new interpretation of each. She begins with contemporary possessions in Malaysia, where women in manufacturing plants were seized by spirits seeking to resacralize the territory. She next looks to wartime Zimbabwe, where female spirit mediums, the Nehanda mhondoro, declared the ancestors' will to fight against colonialism. Finally she provides an imaginative rereading of the performative power of possession by interpreting two plays, Euripides' Bacchae and S. Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, which feature possessed women as central characters. This book can serve as an excellent introduction to postcolonial and feminist theory for graduate students, while grounding its theory in the analysis of regionally and historically specific moments of time that will be of interest to specialists. It also provides an argument for the evaluation of religious lives and their struggles for meaning and power in the contemporary landscape of critical theory.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Beyond the Percentages: Abortion and Meaning in Taiwan
• 3. Made in Japan? The First Stages of the Adoption and Adaptation of a Japanese Religious Practice in Taiwan
• 4. Fetus Ghosts and Traditional Beliefs in Taiwan
• 5. The Haunting Fetus
• 6. Written and Visual Media
• 7. Religious Masters and Their Temples
• 8. Illness, Healing, and the Limitations of Fetus-Ghost Appeasement
• 9. Sexuality and the Haunting Fetus
• 10. Blood-Drinking Fetus Demons: Greed, Loathing, and Vengeance through Sorcery in Taiwan
• 11. Conclusion: Fetus Spirits and the Commodification of Sin
• Appendix. Dragon Lake Temple's Red Contract
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index.

The Haunting Fetus focuses on the belief in modern Taiwan that an aborted fetus can return to haunt its family. Although the topic has been researched in Japan and commented on in the Taiwanese press, it has not been studied systematically in relation to Taiwan in either English or Chinese. This fascinating study looks at a range of topics pertaining to the belief in haunting fetuses, including abortion, sexuality, the changing nature of familial power structures, the economy, and traditional and modern views of the spirit world in Taiwan and in traditional Chinese thought. It addresses the mental, moral, and psychological aspects of abortion within the context of modernization processes and how these ramify through historical epistemologies and folk traditions. The author illustrates how images of fetus-ghosts are often used to manipulate women, either through fear or guilt, into paying exorbitant sums of money for appeasement. He argues at the same time, however, that although appeasement can be expensive, it provides important psychological comfort to women who have had abortions as well as a much-needed means to project personal and familial feelings of transgression onto a safely displaced object. In addition to bringing to the surface underlying tensions within a family, appeasing fetus-ghosts, like other dealings with supernatural beings in Chinese religions, allows for atonement through economic avenues. The paradox in which fetus-ghost appeasement simultaneously exploits and assists evinces the true complexity of the issue--and of religious and gender studies as a whole.

• American Women as Religious Thinkers: Dissenting Participants
• Ambivalence as a New Religious Virtue: The Creativity of Women's Contradictory Experiences of Their Traditions
• The Immanence of the Sacred: Women's Religious Thought Comes Down to Earth
• The Revelatory Power of the Ordinary and the Ordinariness of the Sacred: Mixed Blessings
• "Relationship" and Its Complexities: Inhabiting the Cosmic Web
• Healing and Women's Theological Creativity: Strategies of Resistance, Acceptance, and Hope
• Epilogue: Apres le deluge What's Next?

"The Religious Imagination of American Women" is an exploration of five ideas that have become particularly powerful catalysts in the theological imaginations of women in many difference communities. These are ambivalence toward their traditions; the immanence, or indwelling, of the divine; the sacredness of the ordinary and the ordinariness of the sacred; relationality as at the root of reality; and healing as a central function of religion. Because these ideas are more evocative than prescriptive and not confined to any one religious tradition, they have given rise to a multiplicity of interpretations rather than to any one set of religious claims.Jewish and Roman Catholic women, Buddhist, Mormon, and Protestant (liberal and, to a lesser degree, conservative), spiritual feminists, and members of different racial and ethnic communities all reflect in varying ways on these ideas, depending upon what is at stake theologically and culturally in their particular communities. Taken altogether, the fruits of many different women's religious thought offer some clues as to how the entry of women into the public arena of theological creativity may be shaping American religious ideas and world views at the end of the twentieth century. At its broadest, this book offers a multi-voiced response to the question: 'When women across many traditions are heard speaking theologically, publicly and self-consciously as women, what do they have to say'?
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Although most historical and contemporary religions are governed by men, there are, scattered throughout the world, a handful of well-documented religions led by women. Most of these are marginal, subordinate, or secondary religions in the societies in which they are located. The one known exception to this rule is the indigenous religion of Okinawa, where women lead the official mainstream religion of the society. In this fieldwork-based study, Susan Sered provides the first in-depth look at this unique religious tradition, exploring the intersection between religion and gender. In addition to providing important information on this remarkable and little-studied group, this book helps to overturn our mostly unexamined assumptions that male dominance of the religious sphere is universal, axiomatic, and necessary.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Although most historical and contemporary religions are governed by men, there are, scattered throughout the world, a handful of well-documented religions led by women. Most of these are marginal, subordinate, or secondary religions in the societies in which they are located. The one known exception to this rule is the indigenous religion of Okinawa, where women lead the official mainstream religion of the society. In this fieldwork-based study, Susan Sered provides the first in-depth look at this unique religious tradition, exploring the intersection between religion and gender. In addition to providing important information on this remarkable and little-studied group, this book helps to overturn our mostly unexamined assumptions that male dominance of the religious sphere is universal, axiomatic, and necessary.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Contents Preface Introduction The Cult of Bona Dea: Introduction to
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 1: The Cult of Bona Dea
• 1. Hercules and Cacus
• 2. Hercules and Bona Dea
• 3. The Women's Goddess
• 4. 'A Rite So Ancient...'
• 5. Bona Dea and the Mysteries of Mithras
• 6. Opertanea Sacra
• 7. Wine, Milk and Honey. The Cults of Ceres and Flora: Introduction to
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 2: Ceres and Flora
• 1. Uneasy Misogyny
• 2. Wife and Prostitute in Myth
• 3. Wife and Prostitute in Ritual. Venus' Role in Roman Religion: Introduction to
• Chapter 3.
• Chapter 3: Venus
• 1. Venus Verticordia
• 2. Venus Obsequens and Venus Erycina
• 3. Venus and Bona Dea. The Vestals and Rome: Introduction to
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 4: The Uses of Virginity: The Vestals and Rome
• 1. The Transvaluation of Virginity
• 2. Virginity and the Ritual Representation of Roman Integrity. Conclusion Notes Bibliography.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The role of women in Roman culture and society was a paradoxical one. On the one hand they enjoyed social, material and financial independence and on the other hand they were denied basic constitutional rights. Roman history is not short of powerful female figures, such as Agrippina and Livia, yet their power stemmed from their associations with great men and was not officially recognised. Ariadne Staples' book examines how women in Rome were perceived both by themselves and by men through women's participation in Roman religion, as Roman religious ritual provided the single public arena where women played a significant formal role. From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins argues that the ritual roles played out by women were vital in defining them sexually and that these sexually defined categories spilled over into other aspects of Roman culture, including political activity. Ariadne Staples provides an arresting and original analysis of the role of women in Roman society, which challenges traditionally held views and provokes further questions.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• The divine feminine in Tibet's Gesar of Ling
• Kalidasa's Sanskrit drama, Sakuntala : from passivity to adamantine essence
• The Nibelungenlied : Kriemhild and Brunhild : the obsessive/compulsive stress syndrome
• The Quiché Mayan Popol Vuh : mother participates in the creation
• Racine's Phaedra : "The horror of remorse"
• Yeat's Deirdre : an Irish/Celtic feminist and heroine
• I.B. Singer's "Yentl the Yeshival boy" : gender deconstruction and the fashioning of the modern woman.

• ONE: Introduction; TWO: The Body and Gender; THREE: The Body as Site for Religious Imagination; FOUR: The Body as Sign for Religious Imagination; FIVE: Site, Sign, and Imagination; SIX: Mapping Religion; Notes; Select Bibliography; Exhibition Catalogues; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; R; S; T; U; V; W; Z.

Offering a feminist perspective on the significance of the body in the context of religious life and practice, this treatise examines the evidence, ranging from the novels of Toni Morrison to the paintings of Frida Kahlo.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
In recent years feminist scholarship has increasingly focused on the importance of the body and its representations in virtually every social, cultural, and intellectual context. Many have argued that because women are more closely identified with their bodies, they have access to privileged and different kinds of knowledge than men. In this landmark new book, Paula Cooey offers a different perspective on the significance of the body in the context of religious life and practice. Building on the pathbreaking work of Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain, Cooey looks at a wide range of evidence, from the Argentine prison narrative of Alicia Partnoy, to the novels of Toni Morrison and the paintings of Frida Kahlo. Drawing on current social theory and critique, cognitive psychology, contemporary fiction and art, and women's accounts of religious experience, Cooey relates the reality of sentience to the social construction of reality. Beginning with an examination of the female body as a metaphor for alternative knowledge, she considers the significance of physical pain and pleasure to the religious imagination, and the relations between sentience, sensuality, and female subjectivity. Cooey succeeds in bringing forward a sophisticated new understanding of the religious importance of the body, at the same time laying the foundations of a feminist theory of religion.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Offering a feminist perspective on the significance of the body in the context of religious life and practice, this treatise examines the evidence, ranging from the novels of Toni Morrison to the paintings of Frida Kahlo.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
In recent years feminist scholarship has increasingly focused on the importance of the body and its representations in virtually every social, cultural, and intellectual context. Many have argued that because women are more closely identified with their bodies, they have access to privileged and different kinds of knowledge than men. In this landmark new book, Paula Cooey offers a different perspective on the significance of the body in the context of religious life and practice. Building on the pathbreaking work of Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain, Cooey looks at a wide range of evidence, from the Argentine prison narrative of Alicia Partnoy, to the novels of Toni Morrison and the paintings of Frida Kahlo. Drawing on current social theory and critique, cognitive psychology, contemporary fiction and art, and women's accounts of religious experience, Cooey relates the reality of sentience to the social construction of reality. Beginning with an examination of the female body as a metaphor for alternative knowledge, she considers the significance of physical pain and pleasure to the religious imagination, and the relations between sentience, sensuality, and female subjectivity. Cooey succeeds in bringing forward a sophisticated new understanding of the religious importance of the body, at the same time laying the foundations of a feminist theory of religion.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

In this pathbreaking volume, Ross Shepard Kraemer provides the first comprehensive look at women's religions in Greco-Roman antiquity. She vividly recreates the religious lives of early Christian, Jewish, and pagan women, with many fascinating examples: Greek women's devotion to goddesses, rites of Roman matrons, Jewish women in rabbinic and diaspora communities, Christian women's struggles to exercise authority and autonomy, and women's roles as leaders in the full spectrum of Greco-Roman religions. In every case, Kraemer reveals the connections between the social constraints under which women lived, and their religious beliefs and practices. The relationship among female autonomy, sexuality, and religion emerges as a persistent theme. Analysing the monastic Jewish Therapeutae and various Christian communities, Kraemer demonstrates the paradoxical liberation which women achieved by rejection of sexuality, the body, and the female. In the epilogue, Kraemer pursues the disturbing implications such findings have for contemporary women. Based on an astonishing variety of primary sources, Her Share of the Blessings is an insightful work that goes beyond the limitations of previous scholarship to provide a more accurate portrait of women in the Greco-Roman world.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Women's Devotion to Ancient Greek Goddesses
• 3. Women's Devotion to Adonis
• 4. Women's Devotion to Dionysos
• 5. Rites of Roman Matrons
• 6. Women's Devotion to the Egyptian Goddess Isis in the Greco-Roman World
• 7. Women's Religious Offices in Greco-Roman Paganism
• 8. Jewish Women's Religious Lives in Rabbinic Sources
• 9. Jewish Women's Religious Lives and Offices in the Greco-Roman Diaspora
• 10. Autonomy, Prophecy, and Gender in Early Christianity
• 11. Heresy as Women's Religion: Women's Religion as Heresy
• 12. Women's Leadership and Offices in Christian Communities
• 13. Women's Religious Leadership and Offices in Retrospect
• Epilogue: Toward a Theory of Women's Religions.

In this pathbreaking volume, Ross Shepard Kraemer provides the first comprehensive look at women's religions in Greco-Roman antiquity. She vividly recreates the religious lives of early Christian, Jewish, and pagan women, with many fascinating examples: Greek women's devotion to goddesses, rites of Roman matrons, Jewish women in rabbinic and diaspora communities, Christian women's struggles to exercise authority and autonomy, and women's roles as leaders in the full spectrum of Greco-Roman religions. In every case, Kraemer reveals the connections between the social constraints under which women lived, and their religious beliefs and practices. The relationship among female autonomy, sexuality, and religion emerges as a persistent theme. Analysing the monastic Jewish Therapeutae and various Christian communities, Kraemer demonstrates the paradoxical liberation which women achieved by rejection of sexuality, the body, and the female. In the epilogue, Kraemer pursues the disturbing implications such findings have for contemporary women. Based on an astonishing variety of primary sources, Her Share of the Blessings is an insightful work that goes beyond the limitations of previous scholarship to provide a more accurate portrait of women in the Greco-Roman world.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• The Storyteller
• A tale of Deceit and a tale of Kam'ak Mountian
• Born in an Unlucky Hour
• War Stories and a Meeting with the Mountain God
• Buddha Ties
• The Reluctant Bride
• Old Ghosts and Ungrateful Children -- Epilogue 1985.

"This exceptionally well-written book is good reading, not only for specialists but also for beginning students interested in women, Korean culture, and shamanism." --Journal of Asian Studies "Kendall maintains a closeness with and respect for her subject that keeps away the chill of academic distance and yet avoids sentimentality." --Korean Quarterly, Spring 2001.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)