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This paper focuses on the discourse on Muslim women's rights in India, aiming to trace how policies concerning Muslim women affect their constitutional rights to equality and non-discrimination. In doing so, this paper explores a colonial continuity of policies in the post-independence era and the subsequent governments. The purpose of this paper is to provide an extensive and nuanced discussion on Muslim women's rights in light of their historical evolution, the existence of personal laws, and the ongoing debates on a Uniform Civil Code. This article concludes that Muslim women continue to struggle for their rights to equal citizenship at the intersection of gender, religion, colonialism, and secularism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the strict rejection of casteism by the Sikh faith, caste-based hierarchies are still a prevalent factor amongst Sikh diasporas within the UK. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork amongst women whose caste is considered to occupy a lower status, this paper examines their experiences and explores how, over time, this has contributed to the construction of their identity. This article situates the women within a nexus of complex social and cultural factors, illuminating the representations of caste, gender and intergenerational change within Nottingham. An intersectional standpoint provided an analytical value in accentuating the sites where gender, caste and the mediation of honour intersected. The research shows a heterogeneity in the self-positioning of women vis-à-vis caste identity and shows a marked difference in attitudes between generations, denoting a depreciation in the significance of caste. Ultimately, while the respondents were conscious of their caste and of the historical prejudice against their caste, it is significant that they did not live their lives through it, as they internalised Sikhi as their core identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2021 census data in Australia show that a higher proportion of Bangladeshi Muslim women in Australia have postgraduate degrees compared to the broader female population. They are also more likely to have a bachelor's degree when compared to their counterparts in the wider female cohort. However, the unemployment rate for Bangladeshi Muslim women is more than twice as high as that of the general female population. While a comparison between higher educational attainment and lower labour participation raises the question of whether the goal of higher education is indeed labour participation and the dilemma of valuing education solely based on its economic returns, nonetheless, the disparity alarms curiosity to investigate the reasons. The existing research on Muslim women in Australia reveal a complex web of external and internal multilayered intersecting factors that influence migrant women's labour participation and makes them more susceptible to financial vulnerabilities. Utilizing qualitative methods in analysing fieldwork data from ongoing PhD research, this paper underscores the critical need for a nuanced understanding of internal cultural, domestic, and religious factors to address the unique challenges faced by this demographic in their labour market participation in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorizes Islamic feminism as a form of 'friendship with/in tradition', drawing creatively on Sufism. It unpacks these feminist friendships as forms of 'radical, critical fidelity' which includes commitments and loyalties to tradition while simultaneously engaging critically with sexism, patriarchy, and homophobia. Core epistemological and ethical concerns are explored, including the nature of relationships to tradition; analytical methods for engaging with Muslim tradition from a gendered lens; religious authority and authoritarianism; and most significantly, engaging with emancipatory horizons of imagination that are attentive to the contemporary axes of power and privilege. The paper turns to rethinking approaches to hierarchy and possibilities for abuse, focusing on the shaykh–murīd and broader teacher–student relationships. It presents a nuanced approach to engaging with hierarchies as a serious analytical category that requires attention. Positing fluidity, transparency, and accountability as central to cultivating responsible hierarchical practices, the article suggests that friendship as a modality of relationships can contribute to such positive transformations. This article, emerging from a project on Muslim feminist ethics, presents creative theorizations of Islamic feminism as a liberatory project of human and divine friendships, inspired by Sufi ideas of walāya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will show that sporting institutions that police the boundaries of women's sports do so to keep sportswomen constrained in ways that men's sports and male athletes are not. This paper explores three methods that sporting establishments have used to police and constrain women's sports and sportswomen: the exclusion of women and the creation of different rules for men's and women's sports, the policing of international sporting administrations of which women can compete in women's sports by invoking the specter of "gender fraud", and the exclusion of trans women from sports by relying on conservative Christian notions of a gender binary motivated by a similar strain of homophobia that animated previous efforts to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage. Taken together, these three threads reveal that gender policing in women's sports is not and has never been about "fairness" but about preserving heteropatriarchal systems of power that position women as weak and inherently less athletic than men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islamic feminism, as a discourse within feminism, aims to re-read the Qur'an from a modern egalitarian perspective, which is outside the traditional and patriarchal interpretation of Islam. Islamic feminists reclaim an ethical vision of the Qur'an by presenting a reinterpretation, especially regarding verses that deprive women from having equal rights in the family, as well as in society. However, while Islamic feminism presents a gender equal interpretation of the Qur'an and raises new discourses and debates on gender relations in an Islamic context, a critical insight of Islamic feminism can provide a new gender and religious consciousness that, in turn, develops further perspectives on gender equality in a religious context. This paper aims to provide a critique of Islamic feminism from a social psychological perspective of gender using the theory of Abdulkarim Soroush. His theory considers revelation as the prophet's word resulting from his religious experience. Soroush defines revelation as an inspiration; in this way, revelation or Qur'an is not directly God's word, but Muhammad's word resulting from a divine experience. Accordingly, this paper deals with a social psychological perspective of the lived experience of the prophet as a man in a certain epoch of history, in which the lived experiences of women were not represented, and the revelation or the Qur'an is based on a male lived experience. It begins with an overview of Islamic feminists as well as the more general current of Islamic reformists and their efforts to view the revelation as the word of the prophet in order to avoid attributing the non-scientific content of the Qur'an to the direct word of God. This is followed by a critique of Islamic feminism based on Abdulkarim Soroush's theory of the recognition of the revelation as the word of the prophet, as well as gender theories from the field of social psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the emergence of the Ram Janmabhoomi Movement in the early 1990s, a group of female ascetics and sadhvis displayed tendencies of eschewing conventional gendered images and reinforcing the ideals of virtuous motherhood and female warriorhood in an effort to establish women's alternative authority in the public and private domains. In order to galvanise women's participation in the public sphere, these sadhvis allowed women to assume roles that would otherwise be reserved for men on the grounds that men are no longer living according to their dharma. In reality, the sadhvis were reorganising the feminine space within a predominately masculine Hindutva movement by recommending a level of politicisation of women's private responsibilities in the public sphere with a distinctive articulation of particular gender stereotypes. Taking into account these factors, my aim in writing this essay is to examine the ramifications of the agency and authority that these sadhvis achieved while actively participating in the Hindutva movement. This paper also aims to find out which types of approaches they employed to address the conflicts between conventional womanhood, asceticism, and heroic femininity in the arena of public life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflicts over large-scale mining in Latin America have received growing scholarly attention. Whereas this scholarship has provided very valuable insights into the anatomies of these conflicts, the role of religious ideas and actors has received scant attention. This is remarkable, since the largest church of Latin America, the Catholic Church, seems to be in the midst of an ecological reorientation and increasingly emphasizes its image of the 'Church of the poor and the Earth'. This research aims to fill this gap and examines the role of Catholic ideas and organizations in mining conflicts. Combining document analysis and ethnographic research on a mining project in Ecuador, the paper argues that Catholic ideas and actors play a significant role in discourses regarding nature and the subsoil, and in configuring the power relations part of conflicts. However, when engaging a historical and gendered perspective, it becomes clear that this role is not without ambiguities and tensions. The paper particularly urges researchers to remain critical of the reinforcements of a patriarchal system of power as well as the essentialization of indigenous cosmologies that continue to undergird present-day discourses and interactions of Catholic organizations in mining conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centring on embodiment, gendered eco-spiritual responses to nature, enchantment and environmental crises in the Anthropocene, this paper explores engagement with nature as a spiritual experience and resource through 'Celtic' Christian prayer walks in the Isle of Man. Web-based and printed materials for the walks are analysed for references to nature and environmental responsibility, and the complexities of personal, gendered and theological relation to nature and the environment are explored through participants' accounts. The analysis is attentive to participants professing Christian faith and institutional affiliation as well as those without affiliation or faith, and to their gendered experience. Themes identified include nature-inspired 'Celtic' spirituality; personal relation to the non-human (the divine, nature and nature-as-divine); the landscape as a liminal 'thin place'; and social and environmental responsibility. The paper concludes by signalling the potential for bridging between pilgrimage-centred enchantment and eco-spirituality in order to mobilise engagement with and for the environment in the Anthropocene, including environmental conservation activities, lobbying or protest. Whilst eschewing gendered stereotypes, empirical findings evidence gendered patterns of engagement and responses to different expressions of spirituality. Attention to these differences could facilitate the engaging and mobilising of different cohorts of pilgrims with environmental agendas, inspiring personal and collective environmental action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to analyze the recent phenomenon of the development of a Matri Sena (literally, an 'Army of Holy Women') among the Matua sect of West Bengal, India. Historically known to have suffered caste-based untouchability and forced migration due to communal conflict, the Matua community's current political motivations surround the issue of 'refugeehood' and Indian citizenship. Given this background, the emergence of the Matri Sena as a complex identity among a religion–caste–gender–nation nexus is oriented towards bipartite objectives: one, to actualize the gender-egalitarian ethos that informs Matua religious foundations, and two, to claim legal citizenship status for its community members precisely through a new gendered ideology. We argue that the women gurus of the Matri Sena are able to realize their religious/political aims by fashioning themselves as mothers of an ideal family, community, and by extension, the nation. In deploying their specific gendered ideological constructions, they enact their new roles as influencers in both private and public Matua lives. In such renderings, the woman guru's mother-figure emerges as a political subject through crucial engagements with Matua religiosity on one hand, and dominant Hindu nationalist discourses on the other. In this article, we critically analyze ways in which the Matri Sena constructs a new maternal notion of religio-political power, and how such power furthers both collective Matua aspirations and contemporary national imaginations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divorce emerges as a phenomenon in counterpoint to marriage, both terms representing processes or phases of interaction punctuated by moments of completion and transition to further phases. We can make an initial distinction between divorce, viewed as undoing of preceding phases, and marriage, viewed as prospective of moving into a new relationship. Both divorce and marriage may carry different meanings depending on the wider culture in which they occur. Where marriage comes into being via a series of reciprocal transactions of wealth objects, divorce correspondingly consists of the undoing of such transactions, with the aim of creating a new order of relationships. This process can, in turn, itself vary as it turns on emotional manifestations between the parties involved, sometimes connected with the presence of offspring, as in the case of the Nuer people of South Sudan, among whom a wife does not shift to her husband's settlement place until the couple have a child. The question of transactions goes with the significance of the wider kin networks in which marriages and divorces are regulated. All in all, our paper examines a counterpoint between legal and emotional aspects of both marriage and divorce, raising issues about what a marriage is and what constitutes a divorce, together with nuances of ritual processes that mark pathways between these categories. We draw on ethnography from Pacific cultures, especially Papua New Guinea, and from Africa, to explore these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Famous for its cliff-carved Buddhist cave-shrines, Longmen was also a burial ground that attracted a few women from the seventh and the eighth centuries. This paper examines the burial caves of two lay women, Lady Lou (d. 661) and Lady Zhang (c. 658–c. 718), in relation to the newly excavated archaeological material and epigraphic evidence. Lady Lou compared her cave burial to the Indian ascetic practice in the forest of Śītavana but did not enact the compassionate offering of flesh. Lady Zhang was later removed from her burial cave by her sons so that she could be interred in a joint tomb with her husband. Through these two cases, I investigate the motivations behind the adoption of cave burials in medieval China. Canonical Buddhist scriptures taught these women that their social gender presented an obstacle to the final release. Dedicatory inscriptions at women's burials and two tales of miraculous events at Longmen further suggest that family ties, an important constituent of women's social gender, were believed to persist posthumously. Married women were expected to maintain their spousal and parental relations in the afterlife, and unmarried girls were imagined as turning into seductive spirits because of their lack of spousal union in their lifetime. I argue that cave burials at Longmen were not a compromise of the Indian ascetic practice but rather presented these lay women with a socially acceptable way to break free from their familial attachments after death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have observed that Korean Buddhist nuns have a relatively high social status compared to nuns of other Asian countries, much like their sisters in Taiwan. It is a source of great pride for many Korean bhikṣuṇīs that their community operates with a high degree of autonomy, bringing them to an almost equal standing with their male counterparts. However, this claim of equal status is challenged once the nuns step outside their own communities and into the hierarchical system of the Order, an institution dominated by male monastics. This paper aims to report on the gender disparity between male monastics and Buddhist women, both nuns and laywomen alike. I will first explore Korean Buddhist nuns' experiences of gender discrimination imposed by the current institutional and cultural practices of the Buddhist Order, and their battles to challenge the legitimacy of this power structure. Next, I will introduce various episodes, including the Buddhist administration's conflict with progressive women's groups, to showcase the gender dynamics and current status of women in Korean Buddhism. Ultimately, my argument is that the conservatism and misogynism of traditional religion continue to influence Korean Buddhism today, despite societal efforts to heighten gender awareness and sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will bring together the work of Soren Kierkegaard and John Wesley for the purpose of showing the relevance of their theologies for the empowerment of women. The particular focus will be on the doctrine of original sin. The paper will first address the question of why Augustine's novel doctrine became the orthodox position and why his construction restricts its applicability to women. It will then move to Soren Kierkegaard's understanding of anxiety and despair in his treatise, The Sickness Unto Death. In the theology of Soren Kierkegaard, there is room to interpret his understanding of original sin as "gendered". For him, despair is the counterpart of original sin. It finds two forms: 1. despair is willing to be a self apart from the Power (God) that constitutes the self, and 2. despair is not willing to be a self at all. Feminists have questioned the legitimacy of original sin in its traditional form, and a few have even used Kierkegaard on the way to offering an alternative to pride. One method used here is to explicate this insight further. Another method is to put Kierkegaard and John Wesley in dialogue for the purpose of imagining selfhood for women more hopefully. If "despair" can be imagined as a wounding of the self, Wesley's therapeutic model—seeing original sin as a disease and sanctification as its cure—has much to offer the conversation on personhood and empowered subjectivity, particularly for women. The primary research question investigated here is how a conversation between feminism, Kierkegaard, and Wesley offers an alternative to Augustine's "orthodoxy" without rendering the idea of original sin completely untenable and useless for women within Christianity. Even though Wesley's curative paradigm has been highlighted in more recent years, its particular strength to speak into the lives of those who do not/cannot will to be a self has perhaps yet to be fully mined. It reveals itself in the entire Wesleyan history of affirming women. However, the author believes the potential power of Wesley's theology can be further unleashed by examining its mechanism's in countering "female despair". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mid-twentieth century was celebrated in Theravāda civilizations as the halfway point in the five-thousand-year history of the Buddha's dispensation, the sāsana. Around this time in Burma, fierce debates arose concerning the re-establishment of the extinct order of Theravāda nuns. While women were understood as having a crucial role in supporting and maintaining the sāsana, without a sanctioned means of higher ordination, they were excluded from its centre, that is, as active agents in sāsana history. In this paper, I explore what was at stake in these debates by examining the arguments of two monks who publicly called for the reintroduction of the order of nuns, the Mingun Jetavana Sayadaw (1868–1955) and Ashin Ādiccavaṃsa (1881–1950). I will show that both used the enigmatic Milindapañha (Questions of Milinda) to present their arguments, but more than this, by drawing from their writings and biographies, it will be seen that their methods of interpreting the Pāli canon depended on their unique models of sāsana history, models which understood this halfway point as ushering in a new era of emancipatory promise. This promise was premised on the practice of vipassanā meditation by both lay men and especially women, the latter who, through their participation in the mass lay meditation movement, were making strong claims as dynamic players in the unfolding of sāsana history. The question of whether the order of nuns should be revived therefore hinged on the larger question of what was and was not possible in the current age of sāsana decline. Beyond this, what I aim to show is that mid-twentieth-century debates around female ordination concerned the very nature of the sāsana itself, as either a transcendent, timeless ideal, or as a bounded history embodied in the practice of both monks and nuns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on an empirical study using in-depth qualitative interviews that examines how Roman Catholic undergraduate seminarians in the United States understand gender, sexuality and masculinity. The findings describe how seminarians reject interactionist and social constructionist models of gender, and rely on a strict biological based model where sex/gender are seen as a unified concept. This leads them to adopt an "essential male inclusivity", where they argue that all people assigned male at birth have equal claim to "manhood", which eases pressures on them to act in gender normative ways. The social-psychological and identity-based motivations of these beliefs are examined in connection to their life in the seminary and other anticipated occupational characteristics. In contrast, the seminary's mandates around both celibacy and compulsory heterosexuality, make sexuality more fraught than gender for seminarians. The larger consequences of these perspectives are also explored in regard to gender inequality, homophobia, and the lack of acceptance for the LGBTIQ+ community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the spiritual and gendered experiences of dwelling-in-uncertainty in the context of Bengali char lands. Chars are temporary sandbanks in the river that continuously erode and re-emerge as the river changes course, thereby subjecting their inhabitants to repetitious cycles of losing and regaining land. In this paper I take the ethnographic literature on Bengali chars as a point of departure for exploring what the radical uncertainty of climate change might mean in a context where erosion or land loss does not necessarily involve the irreversible loss of a particular habitat, but often coincides with the anticipation of return. In analyzing the gendered ways in which char dwellers navigate this spiraling cycle of land loss and return, I draw specific attention to the churning, immaterial and spiritual powers that reside below and beyond the water, thereby highlighting the ways in which people are caught up in a land/waterscape that is only knowable to some extent. Whereas debates around climate change often treat religion and spirituality as either obstacles to knowledge or vehicles of meaningful storytelling, this paper deliberately foregrounds the more-than-human forces that linger at the periphery of people's perception and knowledge of the world. In doing so, the paper seeks to move beyond probabilistic notions of climate change and adaptation towards a diverse understanding of the existential uncertainties of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the corporal forms of discipline and techniques of resistance exercised through and by Catholic women religious (sisters/nuns) in Ontario, Canada. Borrowing from Foucault's conception of controlled activity as a technique for disciplining the body, as well as Cvetkovich's notion of repetitive activity as imbued with possibility for knowledge and hope, this paper demonstrates how Catholic women religious, due to their unique position as both leaders and subjects of the institutional church, have been agents of, and subjected to particular forms of disciplinary ritual, both in the Church and in their lived religion. Drawing on the experiential accounts of thirty-two current and former women religious in Canada, the paper demonstrates more or less overt forms of embodied, ritualistic discipline and the extent to which women have resisted this disciplinary power both in convent life and in their later years. The paper sheds light on how women's perception of discipline is related to disobedience and compliance, nuancing the well-known "old norms" of convent life before the Second Vatican Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Presbyterian missions and medical missions in 19th-century Taiwan were successful enterprises that over time developed into the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, which stands today as the largest Christian minority church in this country. Through a Foucauldian biopolitical perspective, this paper analyzes the roles of female missionaries in the management of bodies and the subjective experiences of both foreign and Native women in the missions. Going beyond descriptive narratives and control-versus-agency reductionist frames, the paper points the polyvalent semantics of such roles and experiences. It also explores the complex relations between the women's biopolitical functions, the PCT's industrial type of biopolitical apparatus, and the biopolitical regimes of the late Qing dynasty and the Japanese colonial government in the early 20th century. The conclusions remark on the analytical relevance of biopolitical perspectives in the study of gender and body-related phenomena in Christian missions and Christian religions beyond Western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropologists of religion are preoccupied with questions of identity, community, performance and representation. One way they cope with these concerns is through a reflexive examination of their ethnographic positionality in the field. This provides an opportunity to engage not only with "the other", but also to explore their own identities and background. This article presents an autoethnographic analysis of Pride Shabbat, a special service held in June to celebrate the intersection of Judaism and queerness. The service took place at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) as part of their 50th-anniversary celebration. Since the 1970s, CBST has been known as the largest gay synagogue in the world and provided diverse religious and spiritual services to the Jewish LGBTQ+ community. Based on my participation in this specific event in June 2023, I draw distinct differences between the Israeli Jewish LGBTQ community and the American Jewish LGBTQ community, such as issues related to ageism and multigenerational perceptions within the gay community, the internal dynamic for gender dominance, as well as diverse trajectories of queerness, religiosity and nationality. Symbolically, contrary to the common perception that the diaspora looks to the state of Israel for symbolic and actual existence, this inquiry sheds light on the opposite perspective; the homeland (represented by the ethnographer) absorbs and learns from the queer Jewish practices and experiences taking place within the diaspora (the American Jewish LGBTQ community). This is an opposite movement which reveals the cracks in the perception of the gay community as a transnational community, as well as the tense power relations between Israel and American Jewry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the life and influence of Indira Devi Niloy (1920–1997) who in 1949 began to encounter the sixteenth-century saint–poet Mirabai during her meditative trance states. She would recount songs, stories, and teachings that the saint gave to her as well as scenes from Mirabai's life that she witnessed as an observer and at other times experienced directly as a participant. Their ongoing relationship would have a tremendous influence on Indira Devi as well as her guru Dilip Kumar Roy (1897–1980) and the increasingly international community that grew up around them. Their interactions and Indira Devi's reports in turn would also significantly influence the reception and perceived continuing relevance of Mirabai as both inspiration and authorization for women's self-realization. Additionally, Indira Devi's own story reveals a mode of female guruhood, with a distinct absence of identification with shakti or divine incarnation, a more egalitarian model for the guru–disciple relationship, and an alternate bhakti mode of male–female collaborative leadership with Roy. Further their experiences with Mirabai offer insight into the ongoing engagement of women and men with such influential women of the past, the intersubjective nature of the traditions that surround them, and what Mirabai's message might be for women (and men) today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents evidence for why Corrections should take the humanist, spiritual, and religious self-identities of people in prison seriously, and do all it can to foster and support those self-identities, or ways of establishing meaning in life. Humanist, spiritual, and religious (H/S/R) pathways to meaning can be an essential part of the evidence-based responsivity principle of effective correctional programming, and the desistance process for men and women involved in crime. This paper describes the sociology of the H/S/R involvement of 349 women and 3,009 men during the first year of their incarceration in the Oregon prison system. Ninety-five percent of the women and 71% of the men voluntarily attended at least one H/S/R event during their first year of prison. H/S/R events were mostly led by diverse religious and spiritual traditions, such as Native American, Protestant, Islamic, Wiccan, Jewish, Jehovah Witness, Latter-day Saints/Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, Buddhist, and Catholic, but, increasingly, events are secular or humanist in context, such as education, yoga, life-skills development, non-violent communication, and transcendental meditation groups. The men and women in prison had much higher rates of H/S/R involvement than the general population in Oregon. Mirroring gender-specific patterns of H/S/R involvement found in the community, women in prison were much more likely to attend H/S/R events than men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Sepik myth tells of a time in which women were in charge of powerful spirits before jealous men reversed the gender roles by force. Today, the men of Timbunmeli (Nyaura, West Iatmul) have lost control over spirits who have started to act through female bodies. Christian charismatic rituals hint at mythical times, and remind villagers that women are the original custodians of spirits now understood as being spirits of God. While previously, male bodies represented spirits in shamanic rituals and through male ritual regalia, now women are the predominant recipients of God's gifts. This paper analyzes the current religious practices as onto-praxis in relation to the local concept of personhood and the relational ontology informing the Nyaura's lifeworld. Building on Strathern, Bird-David, and Gell's theories about the personhood of humans and things from an anthropology of ontology perspective and adding a gender perspective to the discussion, this paper argues that dividuality put into practice has not only informed the way the Nyaura have made charismatic Christianity their own, but is also central for understanding current events impacting gender relations in which material objects representing spirits play a crucial role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the contribution of women to the Soviet Union's Jewish movement. We argue that an assessment of the personal stories of Jewish female activists in the former Soviet Union reveals a uniquely meaningful impact on the exodus of Jewry from the Soviet Union, the image of the Soviet Jewish struggle in the international arena, and the establishment of a human rights movements in its support. We explore who these women were, their personal identities, and through what factors they became so successful as prominent leaders in their communities as well as within international organizations. More broadly, by highlighting the link between women's human rights activities and personal life stories, this article emphasizes a more nuanced analysis concerning the complexity of heroism within national freedom movements through its impact on their careers, mental health, and future destinies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study argues that current anthropological research on human–nature relatedness lacks an explicit focus on gender and religion. It brings to the forefront that most current studies in Anthropocene anthropology that move away from anthropocentrism and towards studying more-than-human relatedness imply a disregard of gender that concerns both the 'human' and the 'non-human' in their mutual relationships. Presuming that the concept of sociality does not distinguish between human and nonhuman, the authors believe, however, that expressions of gender in more-than-human social relatedness cannot be denied. Simultaneously, they state that Anthropocene scholarship, by conceiving a secular future for humans restoring their relatedness with nature, is inclined to leave the 'supernature' out and to ignore experiences and embodied practices of enchantment in the modern world. By reviewing the feminist anthropological literature on the nature–culture divide and exploring the potential of enchantment as a way out of the secular condition of anthropology, the authors aim to restore a focus on gender and religion in anthropological Anthropocene scholarship while also transcending the threefold nature–culture–supernature divide. This review offers the theoretical prelude and introduction to the contributions of the Special Issue "Gender, Nature and Religious Re-enchantment in the Anthropocene". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specific groups of Catalan citizens, in spite of them being socially and professionally integrated, suffer the risk of exclusion or segregation on grounds of identity, one example being those who identify with Islam. This study arises from a prospective research project centred on a case study with the Catalan Muslim Women's Association. The main objective was to formulate public policy proposals on education, religion, and gender to be included in the Citizenship and Immigration Plan, through a process based on the women's participation and testimony. The study was divided into two phases: the participatory research followed by evaluation of the applicability of the resulting proposals. It was conducted through semi-structured interviews (n = 37), a discussion group (n = 21), and a round table (n = 31). Oral and textual qualitative data were gathered and analysed using the Ivàlua logical framework. Results for education policy urge the creation of a new professional specialist mediating between all actors. Those for religion call for public spaces for religious practice. In relation to gender, participants continued to demand policies that do not discriminate against Muslim women. In summary, religion is a resource that supports identities, beliefs, and practices, with both empowering and disempowering effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender dysphoria is considered a pronounced experience of distress in the bodies and minds of some transgender people. Examining the text Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryū Suzuki, I analyze some of the difficulties that may arise for transgender practitioners experiencing acutely strong gender dysphoria within the Sōtō Zen meditation experience. I seek to understand how physical and psychological gender distress may make concentration, and thereby realization, challenging and potentially harmful within a context of Sōtō Zen meditation. I consider how meditation can exacerbate the panic and traumatic remembrance of the body and mind, leading both to embodied struggles, as well as undoubtedly philosophical ones too. This paper theorizes gender dysphoria to exist beyond a state of unitary "distress" to include trauma. I put forward an understanding of gender dysphoria that is grounded in traumatic, gendered remembrances—what I call "sustained traumas." Within the meditation experience, I argue trans, gender dysphoric people may experience heightened disconnect, separation, and deepening into their solid and suffering "self" rather than open to the fundamental nature of emptiness, non-duality, and an empty and move-able core. Ultimately, I argue meditation may lead to a deepening of traumatic remembrance, posing potential corporeal and philosophical problematics for gender dysphoric practitioners within Sōtō Zen meditation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After half a century of formal equality regarding ministry in Protestant churches, female leaders have become increasingly common in Protestant churches in Western Europe and North America. However, in Hungary—and in East-Central Europe in general—women leaders are typically absent. Based on in-depth interviews with clergywomen, our study, which has focused on clergywomen's aspirations and choices, explores the reasons why women's church careers in Hungary will stop progressing at a certain point. We argue that by adapting to the traditional gender beliefs typical in Hungarian churches, clergywomen's choices contribute to the maintenance of the existing gender order rather than challenge it Nevertheless, through their growing presence and the way in which they minister, Hungarian clergywomen have gradually expanded women's opportunities in the church, albeit mostly unintentionally, by following a special way of emancipation: 'norm-following emancipation'. This way of emancipation legitimizes women in the ministry but does not promote women in leadership roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hymnal curation processes have for centuries maintained restrictive feedback loops: material that has been published elsewhere continues to be published, and new material—particularly when it offers something unique—is evaluated against the criteria of what has gone before. This results in hymnals that tend to over-represent the work of white male contributors from a Euro–American perspective and limits the amount of material by women, people of color, and contributors from around the world. Since the mid-to-late twentieth century, when some denominations have sought to diversify their worship music collections, change has come slowly. Contemporary hymnody and contemporary worship music are predominantly written by men, and additions of global song have relied on a narrow swath of scholars and publications. To understand some of the power imbalances embedded in church music publishing, we use Voices Together, the 2020 Mennonite hymnal for which we were committee members, as a case study. We explore how this new collection came to include only about 45 newly published songs out of the total of 749 songs, and we analyze statistics related to gender and global song. An intersectional approach allows us to examine how musical actors are marginalized in multiple ways, considering prejudice against class, race, and gender. Understanding how current collections are informed by previously published collections, and consequently how the demographics of contributors have shifted over time, explains how publishing privileges the published and offers insight needed to begin to rectify this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is hardly surprising that in the chronicles of the First Crusade (1096–1099) and in the Chronicon of William of Tyre, accounts propagating Christian warfare, impressiveness, authority and command stem from military actions blessed by God. In the depictions, the position of being a leader is constructed and maintained by a public display of martial ability, by deeds rather than by words. The sources certainly describe aristocratic warriors influencing their peers or larger mixed audiences by speech, but in these cases too, to be successful, the grasp on command normally requires that physical effort follows the communications. The narratives equate physical action with the motives, values and beliefs of the first crusaders. The initiative aimed at achieving leadership is often described approvingly, but the sources also criticize the leaders for manipulative behaviour and unwillingness to cooperate with each other. The judgement of the sources depends on authorial agenda and dynastic rivalries: the leaders of the First Crusade, here especially Bohemond of Taranto (c. 1054–1111), Tancred of Hauteville (c. 1078–1112) and the successors of Godfrey of Bouillon (c. 1060–1100), understood the relation between written history and the claim on power and actively contributed to the production of the heroic image of the first crusaders, that is, the highlighting of their own alleged excellence as leaders. For these three leaders, a cultural legacy, whether initiated during their lifetime or posthumously, was crucial to creating a lasting image of effective leadership. The case of Peter the Hermit, a preacher from Amiens with a supposedly low social background, is different. The fact that chroniclers and composers of chansons included a figure without military expertise and verifiable support from kin and allies among the leaders of the First Crusade, albeit in a controversial manner, bears evidence in itself of his recognition by medieval audiences. Leadership is a gendered talent in the twelfth-century chronicles. The close relation between command and military action on the one hand, and the categorical exclusion of women from the field of battle on the other, discouraged depictions of female leadership in the crusading context. As a result, women were excluded from the leadership of the First Crusade, and references to female authority did not appear in the sources until several decades later in an altered context, with Queen Melisende of Jerusalem (c. 1105–1161) being the clearest example. In her case, too, gender formed a barrier to action and leadership. William of Tyre's description of her reign is ambivalent, while her sister Alice's (c. 1110—after 1151) claim to the regency of Antioch is portrayed negatively. This article compares the models and qualities of the leaders of the First Crusade in medieval sources. The first section considers modern definitions of imposing (charismatic) authority and ties the discussion to the overarching theme of exploring medieval crusader leadership. The second part examines the examples of the leaders of Antioch and Jerusalem and their cultural legacy in the chronicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women with different identity and migration origins represent one of the most significant groups in the migration flows of the Mediterranean in recent years and the intersection of their religious identity and gender has been often neglected in migration policies. The paper applies the method of Critical Frame Analysis (CFA) to analyze the ways in which European policy documents address the intersection between gender and religious diversity. Through the CFA, the article examines the European Agenda on Migration and the priorities identified in the text. The analysis of the document is based on recent case studies of trafficked Nigerian women, which provide examples of the dangerous invisibility of ethnic and religious women in the priorities highlighted in the policy document of the European Commission. The CFA results show that the European Agenda on Migration, in responding to the increased number of arriving migrants from Africa and in designing a new approach towards mixed migration flows, lacks any reference to the gender perspective of migration and gender mainstreaming is missing from the text. The neutrality of the document and the securitization frame applied does not take into perspective the importance of recognizing a gender and intersectional dimension of migration flows, which impacts primarily women coming from African countries beholding strong religious beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While both narrative and performance criticisms take whole-story approaches to the texts they are engaging with, performance critical approaches are uniquely suited to considerations of the body, and particularly of gender. Alongside the growth in performance critical analyses of the gospels that place prominence on the embodied, performed dimension of the texts, when thinking about gender it becomes critical to examine the ways in which masculinity is constructed in and through performance, particularly in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. This article is an examination of the masculinity of Jesus as it is presented in the Gospel of Mark, as it argues that the Gospel of Mark presents a seemingly "unmasculine" depiction of Jesus that performers (as well as later interpreters) would have had to make performance choices about in their own depictions of Jesus for a given performance event. While narrative approaches have more space to hold multiple interpretations in tension with one another, performances of the texts would have necessitated making singular choices that would impact an audience's understanding of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past few decades have witnessed significant increases in levels of education among women members of conservative religions. Contrary to the expectations of both researchers and policymakers, this trend has not been accompanied by decreases in levels of piety. The purpose of this article is to explore what it means to educated religious women to belong to conservative religious communities that embody values and practices that do not conform to the values of modernity associated with exposure to higher education. On the basis of a series of group interviews with educated Jewish Haredi women in Israel, we examined this very question. We found that the women we interviewed demonstrated a deep pride in their religious identity and an ongoing and strong commitment to their community. At the same time, they regarded membership in their community as a form of social capital enabling them to secure a wide array of benefits, which provided compensation for the demand to conform to conservative practices. We conclude that through a process of exchange (social capital against the price of conforming), the women challenge existing norms while maintaining strong religious identities, taking part in democratic processes, and, together, forging articulated bonds of membership and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares two biblical accounts: the description of the construction of the Tabernacle (Ex. 25–40), and its connection to the myth of Eve's creation (Gen. 2). I aim to reveal the literary and symbolic links between "feminine" attributes in these two formative accounts, from their development in biblical literature to their appearances in rabbinic midrash and medieval Kabbalah. My reading seeks to combine gender, myth, and literary study, to explore how erotic images of the sacred were developed and proliferated over generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do we remember and write about powerful women and the impacts they have had on history? Who tells their stories, and to whose advantage are those narratives constructed? And what happens if we look carefully and acknowledge that when they enter historical narratives, many of these "women" are not adults, but actually relatively young girls? Rani Rasmani Dasi (1793–1861) and Bar-rajā Phuleshwari Kunwari (also known as Phulmati and Pramateshwari) (d. 1731) are each remembered as powerful women influencers of popular religion in South Asia, though in very different ways. These two "queens" were each remarkable women who variously defied, upended, and upheld common assumptions and narratives about caste, gender, power, and religion in Hindu society in early modern India. This study critically investigates the work of Rasmani and Phuleshwari's many chroniclers, biographers, and hagiographers, questioning received narratives and attempting to construct a glimpse of them as living girls and women. What do we actually know about them, about their activities and motivations? And what can we know, when so much of the evidence is unreliable? Thrust into unfamiliar social, political, and religious environments as young girls, they grew into deeply religious women who used their considerable influence and resources to promote their own visions of divine power. They also became full participants in and beneficiaries of problematic power structures of domination and exploitation. But with closer investigation, it appears that much of what we think we know about these women is incomplete or, in the case of Phuleshwari, completely unreliable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the moderating effect of religious and spiritual coping mechanisms on the COVID-19 pandemic-induced emotional distress among a group of Japanese women practising temple meditation and yoga. A growing body of literature identifies religion and spirituality as sources of coping mechanisms for emotional distress during the pandemic, in that they enable individuals to find ways to improve subjective well-being and quality of life. The study uses a descriptive phenomenological approach, drawing upon narratives collected between September 2020 and June 2021 from thirty-two respondents composed of a mix of religious-affiliated and self-identified non-religious women practising temple meditation and yoga. Findings indicate that more women, including religious affiliates, have favoured spiritual coping mechanisms in the forms of meditation and body–mind practices to build emotional resilience. This reflects a quest for greater subjective well-being to compensate for the increased burden of emotional care during the pandemic. Overall, while organised religions have come to appropriate more holistic forms of spirituality to respond to demands of emotional care, body–mind spiritual practices have become more appealing for younger religious and non-religious Japanese women alike, in that they downplay gender-conforming ideas of the care economy with its emphasis on dedication and dependency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender, religion, and migration are perplexing issues, especially in this era of the COVID-19 pandemic in which gendered and religious dynamics are emerging within migrant communities across the world. The relations between these three concepts are explored within this bleak time that has exposed previously neglected dynamics present in migrant communities living in distant host countries in Asia, Europe, and the United States of America. In this paper, we discuss the intricacies within religion and gender among migrant communities and the gendered impacts that COVID-19 has had on the aforementioned migrant communities. Through a secondary desk review analysis of the diverse emerging literature, we show that there are gendered implications of the pandemic measures taken by governments as migrant communities occupy unique translocalities. Overall, the intersection of religion, gender, and migration underscores religion reproducing gender roles among the migrants. The reproduction of gender in religious institutions disadvantage women amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis confirmed the trivial fact that migrant women continue to suffer disproportionately due to increased unemployment and disease burden coupled with religious practices that continue to advance the upward mobility of male migrants. There is a need to recast the place of migrant women in this era, and lastly, religion plays a renewed role among migrant communities especially for women who have enhanced their social positions and organizational skills through it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing a significant gap in the knowledge of female Muslim prisoners' religiosity, this paper describes and explains the gendered impact of incarceration on the religiosity of Muslim female and male offenders. Based on quantitative and qualitative data collected in ten prisons, including a male and female prison in England and a male and female prison in Switzerland, the authors show that prison tends to intensify the religiosity of Muslim men and reduce the religiosity of Muslim women. In explanation of this, the authors argue that, at the individual level, the feelings of guilt at the absence of family, the absence of high-status religious forms of gender and feelings of trauma and victimhood impact negatively on Muslim female offenders' religiosity. At the institutional level, female Muslim prisoners, being a small minority, do not mobilise a powerful shared religious identity and chaplaincy provision—including provision of basic religious services—is patchier for Muslim women than it is for men and often does not take into account the specific needs of female prisoners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergent leadership of two female gurus in South Asia who have declared their status as Śaṅkarācāryās (i.e., heads of monastic institutions) based on revelatory experiences. They have done this in order to change patriarchal monastic (akhāṛā) culture and challenge entrenched ideas of women's inferiority in Hindu society. By combining ethnographic data and a gender studies-centered analysis of their narratives and teachings, I shall investigate the role and impact of gendered charismatic authority on modern women's monastic lives. Their self-declarations as Śaṅkarācāryās profoundly break the conventional patriarchal mold for the type of guru women can be and the kind of authorized religious power they can have in this male-dominated role; thus, I term these gurus as "religious feminist influencers". I argue that the gurus invoke charismatic authority by emphasizing the immediacy of the personal realization of the divine, the potency of the female body, and religious emotions, such as radical love, as sources of revelation. By "performing [these] revelation[s]," they construct alternative ways of practicing Hinduism, defined around modernist ideals such as gender equality, inclusion, and women's rights. Moreover, they promote the normalization of women's institutional leadership at the pinnacle of the monastic hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian Muslim women are far more likely to be the target of Islamophobic attacks than men, and common narratives often paint Muslim women merely as victims of Islamophobia. This article takes a new approach and considers how Muslim women may counter Islamophobia and the various audiences they must contend with in their work. Using de Koning's interpellation framework, this research investigates why Australian Muslim women believe gender matters in public countering Islamophobia work and proposes new developments to the framework based on the way Australian Muslim women must mediate the ascriptions of both non-Muslims and Muslim men. This research draws on in-depth interviews with Sunni, Shi'i, and Ahmadiyya women from around Australia who are active in public countering Islamophobia education initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars of Buddhism believe that Buddhists (particularly Mahāyāna Buddhists) regularly reproduce scriptures for merit in general, regardless of their content. However, by examining four Chinese Buddhist nuns' colophons in manuscripts of the Da banniepan jing 大般涅槃經 (Scripture on the Great Extinction; Skt. Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra) (T no. 374) from around the sixth century with reference to its content, I argue that this scripture is significantly related to gender transformation and "female filth". In this way, I suggest that these nuns could have deliberately commissioned this particular scripture due to their gender-based concerns. This study deepens our understanding of the reception of this scripture by Chinese Buddhist nuns by concentrating on the notion of gender, and it indicates that some nuns did not commission scriptures simply for merit without awareness of the scriptures' content. This method of reading Buddhist texts as objects put into practice provides insight into the intellectual background of medieval Chinese Buddhist nuns, showing how they drew on their knowledge of Buddhist texts and financial resources to commission a specific scripture in order to negotiate more spiritual space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the salience of religion and the centrality of religiosity among select LGBTQs. Much consideration has been given to the identity categories of sex, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Means (M) and standard deviations (SD) were calculated for the overall CRSi-20 score and its five subscales. The results show that the overall CRSi-20 score is 3.68 (SD = 0.89), which indicates that the select LGBTQs are "religious". As for the core dimensions of religiosity, the ideology subscale received the highest mean score (M = 4.16, SD = 0.88) while the public practice subscale received the lowest mean score (M = 3.21, SD = 1.15). The overall reliability of the survey is computed at 0.96, while the rest of the subscales have alpha values ranging from 0.81 to 0.95. Study outcomes confirm the general religiosity of participants, particularly among older respondents. Of the five subscales, ideology and private practice emerge as dominant categories. In terms of sex distribution, men tend to self-describe as "highly religious" in relation to women, who identify largely as "religious". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additionally, if nuns in some countries are not allowed to wear the official monastic robes used by monks, as in Thailand, Burma or Sri Lanka, for example, they have their own colors that distinguish them clearly from the laity and thus mark their monastic status. Indeed, also, nuns must go to (?) the monks and request their permission to receive exhortation during I upo adha i (the bi-monthly confession ritual), whereas monks do not need nuns for any of these major monastic rituals. However, it also leads to the dependency of nuns on monks, in that the former need the I bhik u i community both to organize new I bhik uni i ordinations and for other matters - whereas monks can organize their own ordinations independently from nuns. Looking at early Indian Buddhist texts and inscriptions, we can generally find gender pairing within the terminology deployed, a situation which is replicated in many texts related to monastic discipline ( I Vinaya i ) and in teachings addressed by the Buddha to either his male or female disciples ([22]). [Extracted from the article]

In conservative, mostly Malay-Muslim Malaysia, transgender people are frequently articulated in mainstream Muslim and Christian discourses as gendered anomalies and recalcitrant religious dissidents. Due to the fact that normative gender identities and expressions are generally indexed as valid and, thus, 'successful' indicators of social and religious coherence among Malaysians, transgender people who are unable and/or unwilling to abide by regimes of gendered and religious normativity are regarded with scorn as simultaneous failures in gender and religion. By framing my analysis and theorising of selected narratives from two Malaysian Roman Catholic transgender men through Judith/Jack Halberstam's concept of the queer art of failure, I argue that some transgender men of faith actively repudiate such disdainful perceptions by embracing gendered and religious failures, an intellectual resolution which they then translate into strategic customisations of their own spirituality and ethical living. These customisations, anchored in an unshakeable belief in God's loving support and their inherent value in God's eyes despite ecclesiastical disapproval, are acts of subversion that respond impertinently to and defy hegemonic ideologies of gender and religion, and re-imagine alternative knowledges, values, powers, and pleasures towards meaningful forms of liveability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early Lingbao scriptures incorporate pluralistic gender discourses. On the one hand, the early Lingbao scriptures accept the social gender system of "differences between men and women" as the decision of all deities, and incorporate the "chastity" virtue of women advocated by Confucianism. The auspiciousness of giving birth to a boy and the masculine perspective of the Daoist discipline are not immune to correlative sexism. On the other hand, the early Lingbao scriptures actively borrow the Buddhist individualized gender, take the term "transforming a female into a male" as one of the "eight difficult situations" and the merit of worshipping the Daoist scriptures and illustrate the cultivated journey of women beyond gender in the stories of past actions, in an attempt to overcome the correlative sexism caused by the dominant gender system. The Dao unifies the concept of correlative gender and the concept of individualized gender, makes men and women equal objects of teachings, gives the perfected transcendent the freedom to choose gender, and integrates family ethics and individual transcendence with the images of a Daoist wife. The early Lingbao scriptures echo the Daoist principle of softness and femininity, use gender as an opportunity for Daoist cultivation, and explore possible ways to resolve gender trouble. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes two philosophers' views on chastity as a virtue, comparing Song Siyeol, a Korean neo-Confucian philosopher of the east, and David Hume, a Scottish philosopher. Despite the importance in and impact on women's lives, chastity has been understated in religio-philosophical fields. The two philosophers' understandings and arguments differ in significant ways and yet share important common aspects. Analyzing the views of Song and Hume helps us better understand and approach the issue of women's chastity, not only as a historical phenomenon but also in the contemporary world, more fully and deeply. The analysis will provide an alternative way to re-appropriate the concept of chastity as a virtue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sikhism is widely understood and celebrated as san egalitarian religion. This follows from its interpretation as a challenge to the caste schema of Hinduism as well as readings which suggest its gender equality. This paper explores the intersection of caste and gender in Sikh society in relation to Guru Nanak's tenet that Sikhs be householders. Nanak's view that householding is the basis of religious life and spiritual liberation—as opposed to the caste Hindu framework in which householding relates only to the specific stage of life in which one is married and concerned with domestic affairs—was one of the most important social and ritual reforms he introduced. By eliminating the need for an asceticism supported by householders, or in other words the binary framework of lay and renunciant persons, Nanak envisioned the possibility that the rewards of ascetism could accrue to householders. For Sikhs living at Kartarpur, the first intentional Sikh community, established by Guru Nanak as a place of gathering and meditation, Nanak's egalitarian ideals were practiced so that women and members of all castes were equal participants. Guru Nanak's model for social and ritual life presents a radical challenge to the hierarchies and exclusions of Hinduism, and yet, contains within it the basis for ongoing caste and gender disparity for Sikhs, since most Sikhs continue to arrange their householding around caste endogamous marriages and social and domestic arrangements which privilege men. Taking the position shared by a number of Sikh ethnographic informants, and supported by a number of feminist scholars, that the realization of an equal Sikh society remains incomplete, I juxtapose the continued acquiescence to caste and gender with the vision of an ideal and socially just society put forward by the Gurus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary Sikh society, what we consider religious is constantly being challenged, but for Sikhs, what remain constant are Sikhi's sacred texts—they continue to be the paramount teacher and guide. Within this consistency, I ask the question: how can Sikh feminist ideas of representation and identity find expression in response to our understanding/practice of our faith, our institutions, and of the everyday Sikh symbols? This paper critically examines the gendered nature of the Guru Granth, practices within the gurdwaras, and focuses on a part of the Rahit Maryada (Code of Conduct) as an area of exploration in the understanding of the everyday ascribed five symbols of Sikhi (punj kakar) through a feminist lens. I undertake this in order to gain a gendered appreciation of how the scriptures, religious institutions, and the articles of faith resonate with the feminine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controversy has swirled round the writings attributed to Guru Gobind Singh in the Dasam Granth, for not all Sikhs agree that he composed the entire text. Disputes about the Dasam Granth and its status have addressed the fact that many of the text's compositions are concerned with gender with respect to the nature of both divinity and humans, thus playing a key role in the ongoing construction of notions of gender in Sikhism. Female voices, however, have been largely absent from this discourse despite the presence of two key gender-related themes—the figure of the goddess/sword [bhagautī], a topic throughout the text, and the nature of women [triyā caritra], the subject of the longest composition in the Dasam Granth. Through analysis of the intersection of the presence of goddesses and women but the relative absence of female voices in Dasam Granth exegesis, this paper demonstrates that the ongoing reception of the Dasam Granth has been a site for both proclaiming idealized constructions of gender equality, but also instantiating constructions of femininity that run counter to this ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the reversals of gender in Thomas Dekker and Philip Massinger's play The Virgin Martyr (1622) in light of early modern scientific notions of the female body. Like well-known female martyrs from the period, such as Anne Askew, the protagonist, Dorothea, takes on characteristically male attributes: she assumes the role of the soldier and defies scientific understanding of the female gender by sealing her phlegmatic "leaky" body and exuding divine heat that defies her cold, wet "nature". These gender reversals, from Dorothea and other characters, illustrate how the act of martyrdom could be interpreted not only as a miraculous performance, a "witness" to the divine, but one built on sensational, seemingly impossible performances of gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]