Abstract not available

This thesis was later published by University Press of America in 1994. Please contact the ICS library if you would like to view this work.

What Stephen Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air Pump demonstrates to be the case in early modern scientific culture is no less true of the experimental ethic of Jewish feminists today: epistemology and politics are inseparably linked and are projected onto the material of everyday life. In this study of transnational Jewish theopolitics and biopolitics, I show how women enlist their reproductive bodies to develop new forms of spiritual leadership, medical expertise, and religious knowledge and authority as they work to reshape American Judaism. I situate Jewish feminist claims to authenticity and authority within the entangled networks of bio-capital, nationalisms, the logics of classical liberalism and religious subjectivity, and scientific and Rabbinic moral economies. By contextualizing Jewish feminisms in technoscience’s politicization of the sexual body and Christianity’s elevation of the spirit over material, I elucidate how sexual, religious, and epistemic hierarchies structure formations of American religion. This dissertation contributes to growing literatures on religion and science; gender, secularism, and spirituality; transnational American studies; and feminist approaches to medicine and the body. While previous studies on religion and science have highlighted the inseparability of the categories in Euro-American Protestant history or showcased the participation of Jewish men in the development of modern science, this project draws on the “lived religion” methodology to move beyond the activities of elites in institutional spaces. In doing so, it shows how knowledge production happens in intimate, holy places and is structured by sacred and bodily cycles. By stretching the temporal and spatial boundaries of the study of American Judaism, this dissertation reveals how interconnected feminist projects are remaking Judaism as an American religion.

I am writing a feminist theology of music. Feminist musicologists, by studying music's relation to human sexuality (a connection which theologians have neglected, suppressed, or simply ignored), contend that music has always functioned as a metaphor for sexual relations. As such, music constitutes a site where personal and social formation is negotiated and contested. Via repertoires of musical conventions, much like those in film and literature, composers arouse, manipulate, and channel our desires, thereby reinforcing (and sometimes transgressing) cultural norms of sexuality and gender construction. Their compositions become "fabrications of sexuality." (McClary) / Historically, theologians and church authorities vilified music's preeminent worth as an erotic medium, promoting instead its exemplary embodiment of ontic harmony and order. To do so, they clothed their polemic against "illicit" musical practices with the rhetoric of effeminacy, thus veiling male ambivalence toward women and the body in a politics of transcendence. After a critique of these masculinist models, and an exposition of music as a gendered, en-gendering discourse, I will redefine music theologically as abject, fleshly imitatio. To construct a feminist musico-theological model, I shall synthesise a lost trope from the tradition with insights which I have gained from the musical activities of four women musician-composers: Hildegard of Bingen, Bolognese nun Lucrezia Vizzani (and her consoeurs), Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Diamanda Galas. Through this recuperative synthesis, music's theological significance will shift from its incarnation of harmony and order---divine, cosmic, or human to its ineradicable promiscuity, its dis-integrative powers. / My original contribution to the field is fourfold: (1) I document the rhetoric of effeminacy and virility which has influenced and shaped traditional theologies of music, and thereby undermine the latter's privileged status as musico-theological resources; (2) I portray the music of the above women composers as musical imitations of Christ; (3) I enrich revisionist accounts of women in the Christian tradition by giving greater prominence to women's musical activity, the latter previously neglected in, for example, theological studies of mediaeval women, this despite music's centrality to their daily lives; (4) I initiate mutually enriching dialogue between feminist musicology and theology. To date, a feminist theology of music has not been written.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis focuses on the question of “how can the Keiskamma Art Project, its processes and art, be understood in relation to a contextual ecofeminist spirituality?” This study is concerned with women’s experience and expression of the divine through their creativity. It explores how women’s art projects contribute to their aesthetic and creative development and the impact it has on their lives. The study argues that the “Spirit” which manifests as the power of divine creative energy which is released through human creativity can promote full life for women in South Africa. It also explores how the creative process offers a catalyst towards change which affects both personal and communal transformation. Protest art is presented and examples of its historical use both locally and internationally are sited. The discussion offers an understanding of why subordinates in society need to find a safe place to express their protest. Art projects are presented as ‘safe’ sites for women who find themselves oppressed by their societal circumstances to find opportunity for the exploration of their ideas and personal development. Ecofeminism is presented as a contemporary protest movement and the study engages with some of the work of three key ecofeminist theologians; Rosemary Radford Ruether, Ivone Gebara and Sallie McFague. Themes are developed which best describe the characteristics of an emerging ecofeminist spirituality. The focus of the case study is on the Keiskamma Art Project, its processes and art, with specific focus on the Keiskamma Altarpiece. The process of dialogue and consultation which preceded the art making and the artwork are discussed in detail. The context of the Keiskamma Art Project is explored in location in the Eastern Cape in the rural and coastal town of Hamburg. The socio-economic context of the Keiskamma Art Project is outlined, indicating the lived reality of women engaged in this Art Project. In conclusion, the study argues that an emerging contextual ecofeminist spirituality is evidenced through the women’s art, the Keiskamma Altarpiece and the Keiskamma Art Project and has contributed towards the empowerment of local women and helped them articulate a sustainable life giving vision of hope for the future. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

Wiccan witchcraft, a contemporary religion, frequently suffers from misunderstandings; the worst of which, arguably, being that it thrives in a postfeminist society. Although it remains unclear why witches, despite their specific traditions, would not immediately embrace feminism, this study claims that whether practitioners agree or disagree, they are performing feminism. In this study, I argue that Wiccan rhetoric (both discursive and non-discursive) functions epistemically to encourage feminist values. The thesis analyzes three typical forms of Wiccan rhetoric using Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin’s approach of invitational rhetoric and the values of equality, immanent value, and self-determination. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis explores both limits and possibilities. It reflects on processes of appropriation, re-signification and critique as practiced variably by African American Muslim women. I situate these processes within the concept of multiple critique, for specifically three moments-Sherman Jackson's Third Resurrection, the black feminist tradition, and Islamic feminisms.

This thesis addresses the fundamental problem of whether and how the church's tradition can be understood as revelatory given its patriarchal nature and its implication in relations of power. It is therefore concerned with how feminist Catholics are to be accountable to tradition. In addressing this problem the thesis follows three basic movements. The first juxtaposes contemporary discourses that are concerned with revelation, on the one hand, and rupture, on the other. However, by an investigation of the apophatic tradition in theology and its relation to the cataphatic, it suggests that this juxtaposition is both necessary to theology and that it has a long theological pedigree. Therefore the second movement, in seeking mediating paths with which to respond to this rupture in knowledge, proposes a dual mediation that maintains an unreconcilable tensiveness between a path of transformative interpretation and a path which continues to probe that which is unsaid. The third movement looks at how this is expressed in the theology of tradition and the church. By highlighting the distinction between tradition as the whole life of the church and the Tradition which is ultimately Other, it points to a fundamental tension between that which is witnessed to in discourse and is therefore implicated in relations of power and that which, while witnessed to, is ultimately uncapturable but nevertheless accompanies all discourse. In this context, the thesis concludes, the church is both the privileged witness to the Other, but its witness is a wounded witness. While it is in the church that we encounter the Tradition, the challenge that we face is to find ways to allow that which is Other to break through our limited and necessarily wounded discourse. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1997.