This dissertation argues that religious and cultural media are socially organized technologies of power that reproduce, maintain, circulate, and exchange historical myths on black womanhood, which black women and girls both resist and appropriate. Notwithstanding how they may be resisted or appropriated, operative historical myths need to be deconstructed and, in many cases, disoriented. To achieve this, deploying religious, cultural, ideological and black feminist analyses, I construct a black feminist religio-cultural criticism for reading black womanhood less pornotropically in three sites: theological discourse, televangelism, and black popular culture. The aim of this project is that black women and girls might be seen in terms of their complex inter-subjective multi-positionality as opposed to circulating taken for granted scripts on black womanhood that hold them captive to oppressive normative claims.

RELIGION WOMANISH MODES OF PLAY AS A CULTURAL SIGNIFICATION: WOMANIST TENETS AND ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT FOR BLACK FEMALE HUMAN FLOURISHING LAKISHA LOCKHART Thesis under the direction of Professor Victor Anderson Womanish modes of play as a cultural signification, specifically examining womanist tenets and ethical development that lead to black female human flourishing will be presented in this thesis. This thesis will look at how womanish modes of play (i.e handjives, red rover, spades, etc) are ways in which black women communicate, seek, and negotiate meaning in the world; specifically in the areas of ethical development and womanist tenets. This thesis will look at the history of womanish modes of play and discuss its relevance and significance in the flourishing of black women. This thesis will discuss and dialogue with the womanist tenets, womanish modes of play, and ethical development. As part of this thesis work there will be two interviews conducted with black women, both consenting to have their stories recorded and shared, in order to confirm that womanish modes of play are indeed a cultural signification, especially when examining the womanist tenets and ethical development which lead to black female human flourishing.

In this dissertation, I argue that pastoral theologians must better understand crises of intercultural misunderstanding and help repair them. Pastoral theologians study human suffering and fulfillment in relation to care-giving practices. Most pastoral theologians use interdisciplinary methods to understand intrapsychic and interpersonal aspects of human suffering and fulfillment without considering cultural differences. I use theology, psychology, and postcolonial theory to examine case studies of intercultural misunderstanding. I use postcolonial theorists to show that talk about culture can remain fairly abstract if we ignore the systemic and global violence that colonialism instituted in our ways of thinking and relating. I develop a postcolonial theory of culture that remains committed to what pastoral theology has always done best: meaningfully considering the nature of care for persons and communities.

Given the increasing influence of popular culture on todays society, this project will analyze representations of black women to explore how these images influence young black womens moral sphere. Cultural representations are worthy of theological reflection because these controlling images become sacred rhetoric within popular culture. This paper is an interdisciplinary study utilizing moral philosophy, cultural studies, black feminist discourse and womanist ethics. I begin with a historical analysis of the four controlling images of black women provided by Patricia Hill Collins black feminist and sociologist. With psychologist Mary Pipher, I assert that we live in a girl-poisoning culture that defeats and delimits the maturation process of young black women by inculcating racist and misogynist stereotypes through popular culture, such as hip-hop, which are internalized before young women are fully capable of discerning the effects on their identity. I show how these images operate within what womanist ethicist Emile Townes calls the fantastic hegemonic imagination and suggest how a theory of ontological black femininity is created in popular culture, using the work of philosopher, Victor Anderson. Using three young black women in hip-hop, one subculture of popular culture, I provide a cultural analysis of black female representations today. I then explore the complex subjectivities of black female hip-hop artists and ask who decides whether these artists provide counter narratives. Finally, I conclude by using moral imagination as a subversive religious discourse to respond to young black womens moral identity formation within popular culture to suggest an alternative moral philosophy.

This dissertation isolates and analyzes the different historical approaches to the systematic theological problem of the union of the doctrines of creation and grace. I argue that the history of Western theologys grappling with the problem of this unity is oriented by the unique status of the will as distinct from the intellect and desire, and ordered toward the positive, ethical affirmation of otherness. I make the case for this claim through an archaeological investigation of the Roman Catholic and Protestant paradigms for uniting these doctrines, noting how each paradigm arises out of the two conflicting impulses of Augustines early doctrine of creation and his mature theology of grace. I contend that it is only with a clear apprehension of the nature of the will, in distinction from intellection and desire, and an irreducible orientation toward the positive affirmation of otherness that the unity of creation and grace can be coherently thought. I further insist that the discussion of that unity must be reconstructed in light of this fact. I conclude with my own programmatic sketch for what such a reconstruction must look like.

RELIGION THE POETICS OF EMBODIMENT IN ISLAMIC MYSTICAL PHILOSOPHY KATHARINE DENISE LOEVY Thesis under the direction of Professor William Franke What modes of reading can be provoked by reading different kinds of texts and textual practices? How might these alternative modes enable us to rethink our conception of the relationship between discourses and embodiment, and the functioning of discourse upon bodies that is identified by the notion of discursive mediation? This thesis considers texts and practices that emerged from traditions of Islamic mysticism, and that demand a transformation in the reader as a result of the way in which embodiment and discourse interact. The analyses that follow thus bring literary, religious and cultural dimensions of sufism to questions of reading. What we stand to gain from this engagement with Islamic mysticism is thus a reorientation toward texts and toward textually-mediated practices with regard to embodiment and its relationship to text. Approved______________________________________Date_______________

The author of 1 Peter adapts aspects of a Greco-Roman socio-cultural expectation, that of the hierarchically ordered relations within households, and prescribes this adaptation for the behavior of certain members of the religious communities. Since the exhortations are related to behavior in their own homes, drawing upon household relationships in discussing faithful discipleship blurs the line between family households and the religious family gathered in households. As a result, the structure of the basic religious communal unit within burgeoning Christianity mimics the basic unit of the State. I argue that such a move has socio-political implications that lead to collusion with Empire, thus, 1 Peter is one of many new testament texts that perpetuate imperial ideology. Church structure and relations of power are modeled upon the kyriarchal socio-political relations of dominance and control that are endemic to their context. This collusion also constructs womens subjectivity and agency in terms of their silent Christ-like suffering and submissive relationship to their husbands, all of which circumscribes them within the household domain. This silenced, circumscribed subjectivity, which is maintained by dynamics common to abusive relationships, is perfectly in line with the imperial ideology of the letter. This subjectivity is not only materialized within the subsequent faith communities, but is also necessary for the perpetuation of the church.

Although the ideal of sexual renunciation was gaining popularity within many Christian groups in the second and third centuries, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian stand out as two early Church Fathers who defended marriage. Arguing against the Christians who were rejecting marriage and family life, Clement and Tertullian both upheld Christian marriage at a critical point in the debate. Despite Tertullians belief that the chaste, celibate life was better than the married one, he saw the goodness of Christian marriage. Clement also encouraged Christians to strive for chastity, believing it could be achieved even within marriage. Throughout each of their writings on marriage, family, and the household, the particular cultural contexts of Clement and Tertullian - Greek Alexandria and Roman Carthage, respectively are evident. Shaped by their environments as well as the biblical scriptures, both Clement and Tertullian supported the institution of marriage alongside the values of continence and chastity, thereby fortifying the foundation of Christian marriage that later Christian thinkers such as Augustine and John Chrysostom would further develop.

Thesis under the direction of Professor Shaul Kelner This thesis investigates how evangelicals accommodate doubt into a theology that more or less demands certainty. By interviewing members from two area evangelical churches -- one Southern Baptist and the other nondenominational emergent -- I encountered distinct differences in both how members confessed doubt and the content of said doubt. I discovered polarized beliefs in inquiring about the infallibility of scripture, the eligibility of salvation, and the content and location of the afterlife. In exploring the nature of these differences and drawing from supporting theory, I propose that the plausibility of belief is secondary to the identity construction that church membership affords. I then conclude that doubt is not necessarily deleterious to one's faith, but if sublimated thoughtfully, can actually augment one's religious convictions.

RELIGION JESUS THE BORDERLANDER: HYBRIDITY AS SURVIVAL STRATEGY AND MODEL FOR POLITICAL CHANGEA CULTURAL REPRESENTATION FROM THE GOSPEL OF JOHN LETICIA AÍDA GUARDIOLA-SÁENZ Dissertation under the direction of Professor Fernando F. Segovia Since the 1970s the face of biblical studies in general and Johannine studies in particular has been changing. The long-standing historical methodwith its universal and objective readerhas been particularly challenged by the presence of the real readerculturally and politically positionedadvanced by cultural studies. As real reader myselfMexican-American woman from the Two-Thirds Worldreading from the perspective of cultural studies, my aim in this project is to construct an alternative Johannine representation of Jesus as a hybrid being, a borderlander, which can operate as a postcolonial strategy of survival and as a model for political change. To establish the grounds for such hybrid Jesus I examine in chapter one the theories of representation used by Johannine scholarship to prove how all representations, even those considered objective, are inevitably political and culturally conditioned. In chapter two I survey cultural studies as my methodological foundation, highlighting its political background as an academic endeavor committed to social transformation. I define my hybrid identity as my hermeneutical lens and reading strategy. In chapter three I offer my representation of Jesus by analyzing first the Prologue of John, to map Jesus' hybrid identity as borderlander and second, the story of the Woman Accused of adultery, where Jesus offers an opportunity for political transformation by breaking down the patriarchal discourse. In chapter four I conclude with the political ramifications of Jesus' hybridity as a strategy for survival and model for political change. In our postcolonial, hybrid world, surrounded by countless political and geographical border zonessuch as the U.S.-Mexico borderlandinterdependency and integration are not far from our reach if we are willing to understand the potential of liminal and third-spaces as privileged sites of hope for a better world.