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In this study I want to explore and give voice to the lived embodied experiences of women affected by vulvodynia in Italy. Through an autoethnography and two qualitative interviews, I will try to investigate if their embodied experiences question or not the normative construction of female body in Italian context.

This dissertation develops a constructive theological interpretation of the Body of Christ metaphor in order to provide a distinct understanding of Christian identity to assist Christians in responding to religious diversity. Presently, two academic approaches guide contemporary Christian theological responses to religious pluralism: theology of religions and comparative theology. They offer resources and insights into Christian responses, but questions remain regarding the relationship of Christian identity to contexts of religious diversity. Revitalizing the Body of Christ metaphor through engagement with contemporary theologians, this dissertation interprets their insights about alterity and embodiment regarding religious difference. Focusing on concepts of embodiment, relationality, diversity and praxis, the Christian identity that emerges is neither exclusive nor contained, but open and interdependent. This provides a framing of Christian identity that assists Christians in relating to religious diversity with openness. Chapter one surveys contemporary approaches that have guided the Christian theological response to religious diversity. Turning to the Body of Christ metaphor in the New Testament writings of Paul, chapter two demonstrates the original power of the metaphor to shape the values and worldview of early Jesus-followers. Chapters three and four explore womanist, feminist, queer, and crip theologies for critiques and contributions to the theological significance of bodies. Offering warnings about the failure to attend to the realities of difference, they offer essential theological insights into conceptions of bodies, hierarchy, and difference. The content they provide for the Body of Christ metaphor shapes Christian self-understanding in a manner that opens the Christian community as it engages other religious bodies. The final chapter provides a constructive interpretation of the Body of Christ and points to distinctive practices that guide the Christian community into a new embodiment of this metaphor. The identity provided by the metaphor shapes Christian relationships with each other and the world through practices of discernment, re-membering, and partnership. It challenges Christians to value fluidity and porousness, putting them in tension with dominant conceptions of Western society, and, through relationality and appreciation for the other, it calls Christians to engage religious diversity with actions of social justice.

People of Color (POC) and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer (LGBTQ) people have experienced disembodiment due to the Christian dualism in the white Evangelical Protestant (WEP) church and its liturgies. The project first analyzes how this Christian dualism interacts with white supremacy and homophobia within the Sunday liturgy. Then, the project describes how disembodied liturgies significantly harm POC and LGBTQ people. As a response, a theology of embodiment can bring healing to POC and LGBTQ people by implementing embodied liturgies at Table San Diego, a multiracial, LGBTQ-affirming congregation attempting to integrate the Christian faith with the physical body, the lived experience, and social contexts. Addressing the racial, gendered, sexual, and classed experiences of the congregation across various social, political, economic, and religious climates requires a reimagination of the Sunday liturgy as an embodied experience. Liturgical research is drawn from the Black Spirituals, the Gay Liberation Movement, and Asian-American liturgies.

Preaching is a corporeal activity. Gospel proclamations emerge from theological imaginations cultivated through embodied life. However, bodies beyond the pulpit present challenges for preaching. Wounded bodies, in particular, lay bare the inherent limitations of theological discourse. This dissertation offers a homiletical vision rooted in a close reading of the book of Job. Elevating an interpretation of Job as a theological aid for homiletics, this dissertation explores how bearing faithful witness to the wounds of those beyond the pulpit transforms preaching. Many homileticians have attended questions that relate directly to the thesis of this dissertation. Feminist and womanist homileticians such as Anna Carter Florence and Lisa Thompson have validated the epistemic authority of those who testify from marginalized social locations, laying the groundwork for my claims about the epistemic relevance of wounded bodies beyond the pulpit. Homileticians have also addressed the crisis of theological speech in the presence of suffering. Particularly, Christine Smith and Joni Sancken have contributed to a growing body of literature that urges preachers to transform their practices in light of radical suffering. However, an enfleshed homiletic presses beyond trauma-awareness as it engages the inherent limitations of theological discourse at the site of suffering, opening itself to transformation by another’s testimony. This dissertation adds a distinct mode of transformation to a converging homiletical discussion on bodies and suffering: that of bearing witness, as informed by ethicist Kelly Oliver. Bearing witness is a way of engaging others that recognizes that one’s body is ethically bound to others. Embracing the concepts of social flesh and social material advanced by Sharon Betcher and Mayra Rivera, I argue that wounded bodies are not entirely disjointed from the preacher, to be apprehended across an untraversable rift. Rather the space between is a shared social fabric, wherein the preacher is ethically implicated in the testimonies of others. Preachers bear a responsibility to faithfully engage another’s wounds, even as they challenge or confound the preacher’s theological imagination. Thus, bearing witness opens the possibility for an enfleshed gospel to emerge—a gospel that is accountable to the bodies beyond the pulpit. / 2024-12-16T00:00:00Z

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how surface engagement through touch affects perception of stimuli and mood. Researchers have found psychological, physiological and cognitive benefits associated with exposure to and interaction with nature. Stress Reduction Theory with Psychoevolutionary framework, and Attention Restoration Theory are often used to explain and interpret results. However, studies that focus on individuals with negative perspectives of nature find a positive affective response to nature is not universal. Rather, individuals respond differently based on their own experience with nature. Childhood exposure and culture have been found to influence attitudes towards nature. Theories of embodied cognition emphasize the importance of previously learned associations and embodied states have been found to influence judgment, experience of emotions, and physiological states. To assess whether an individual's attitude towards nature influences the embodiment of a positive or negative state, participants were randomly assigned to come into physical contact with one of four surfaces with their feet: grass, fake grass, dirt and cement. Individuals affective, cognitive and physical relationship with nature was measured with the Nature Relatedness Scale. Change in perception of neutral stimuli and mood before and after surface exposure were measured. Results suggested surfaces influenced mood in different ways, however the effects on perception were unclear. A participant's perspective of nature did not seem to influence mood change depending on surface type. Future research is needed to assess whether the shift in mood was based on metaphors of language, priming from surface texture, or a result of complex interaction between bodily sensations and cognition.

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