The FSR Blog is a place where studies regarding the intersections between feminism and religion are shared with a wide audience. MORE »
By Meghan R. Henning. September 2021 marked the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. And Pope Francis encouraged the church to study Dante’s Divine Comedy as a way to navigate the upheaval that is being experienced globally as a result of the pandemic. Pope Francis’ suggestion is aimed at encouraging personal and corporate reflection, part of […]
By Shoshana Olidort. As a young Lubavitch girl growing up in Crown Heights, my earliest encounters with people from the community who were questioning our way of life, and beginning to explore alternate paths, were all with men. This was right around the time of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s death, which turned our little world on […]
We want to hear your responses to FSR Blog’s @theTable: “Unorthodox Media.” We invite you, our readers, to reflect on any of blogs in this series or contribute your own analysis of “My Unorthodox Life” or other forms of what this series names “unorthodox media.” Introduction to the series: “This collection includes a number of responses […]
By Dory Fox. Last summer, I was debating whether or not I should unpack my library. I had defended my dissertation, thus marking the end of the line for me in academia. Accordingly, I vowed that it would be a summer free of interpretation, free of intellectual inquiry, free of the books I had once […]
By Sam Shuman. In the summer of 2009, Julia Haart was in a decidedly different social milieu than the one in which we find her in 2021 in the Netflix reality TV show, My Unorthodox Life. Before she lived in a 10,000 square foot penthouse apartment in TriBeCa and served as the CEO for Elite […]
By Shira Schwartz. A central theme of My Unorthodox Life, the latest release in the genre of Unorthodox Media, is the presumption, acquisition and staging of “choice,” often paired with its close cousins, “freedom” and “self.” The liberal language of choice is a critical feature not only of OTD media, but of OTD life. (See […]
By Shira Schwartz. This collection includes a number of responses by Jewish studies scholars to Netflix’s reality show My Unorthodox Life, released in June 2021. When I first conceived of this collection, I wanted to highlight the significance of this latest release in ex/post Orthodox Jewish media, which, as a hyperbolic reality television series, may […]
By Tamisha A. Tyler. At the beginning of 2020 I wrote a tweet that stated, “The Parable Series by Octavia Butler is your required reading for 2020. You think Handmaids Tale got close, you ain’t read nothing yet.” I did not anticipate how well that tweet would age. If the last two years have taught […]
By Nereyda Yong and Aizaiah G. Yong. Two of the most prominent revelations that have come from the COVID-19 pandemic are the widespread inequities that continue to plague marginalized communities as well as the devastating effects due to multiple centuries of systemic racism. What has also been made visible, however, are the precarious circumstances in […]
By Judith Plaskow. I learned an important lesson this past summer about the ways in which institutional structures perpetuate a profound power imbalance between sexual harassers and those who are sexually harassed. In August, I received a letter from the AAR Executive Director saying that the board had voted to offer me the Ray L. […]