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Captivity and Conflict: A Study of Gender, Genre, and Religious Others

This project considers questions of religious othering in the contemporary United States through the lens of popular post-religious narratives. These narratives salaciously depict mistreated women in order to demarcate certain religions as deviant; authors and pundits then use these narratives in order to justify outside intervention in specific religious communities. By closely analyzing a selection of contemporary narratives written about women from Muslim and fundamentalist Mormon communities with special attention to both the feminist enactments and tropes of captivity which permeate these texts, this project challenges simplistic portrayals of religious Others. In doing so, the analysis draws the reader's attention to the uncanny imitations in many of these texts: in arguing that certain religions "capture" their female adherents, authors of contemporary captivity narratives silence the voices of women whose stories they seek to illuminate. The dissertation also explores the ambivalent content of many of these narratives. When read against the grain, captivity literature offers surprising opportunities for nuanced explorations of religion, gender and agency. / Religion

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/2939
Date January 2015
CreatorsGorman, Holly R.
ContributorsLevitt, Laura, 1960-, Alpert, Rebecca T. (Rebecca Trachtenberg), 1950-, Watt, David Harrington, Abdullah, Zain
PublisherTemple University. Libraries
Source SetsTemple University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis/Dissertation, Text
Format294 pages
RightsIN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Relationhttp://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/2921, Theses and Dissertations

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