By Kaya McCluskey. Two cultures collided in my home of origin. Growing up, I experienced Catholic Mexican family members depending on the collective. It felt wrong not to include the whole family at every gathering, not to mention heaven. On the other hand, white evangelical culture preached exclusively individual salvation. Some family members might be […]
By Alejandro Escalante. A loca (“madwoman”) named Willian danced and sang boisterously as she swept the ground and lead the procession of sacred images of Santiago Apóstol in Loíza, Puerto Rico. As she swept, she blew kisses and twerked provocatively with festivalgoers, enticing some and vexing others. Willian was a “loca,” a festival personage that […]
By Sharon Jacob. “When a Hindu man marries a Muslim woman, it is always portrayed as romance and love by Hindu organizations, while when the reverse happens it is depicted as coercion.” Charu Gupta, Historian at University of Delhi Genesis 34 is the story of Dinah and the Shechemites. The most common interpretations of Genesis […]
By Yasmine Singh. How does one live in an atmosphere where most if not all bets are against you because of your class, gender, and/or religion? Is advancement possible for those who dream and aspire but struggle to survive? If so, at what cost? Who gets a second chance if they find themselves at the […]
By Jamie Lee Andreson. Matriarchy, understood as Black women’s leadership, has been a central criterion in public debates on leadership, race and gender in the West African derived Candomblé religion in Brazil. In Candomblé, matriarchy expresses a counterpoint to the explicit historical patriarchy of the Brazilian Catholic Church. The female leadership of Candomblé priestesses of […]
By Sharon Jacob. In her seminal essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri C. Spivak points out that the subaltern cannot speak not because, “the subaltern cannot pronounce words or produce sentences. The subaltern “cannot speak,” instead, because her speech falls short of fully authorized, political speech. Too much gets in the way of her message’s being heard, socially […]
By Sharon Jacob. In many cultures, mass-suicides have been used as a form of protest against foreign colonization. In India, the ritual of Jauhar was traditionally performed by upper caste Rajput women that immolated themselves by jumping into flames together. Lakshana N. Palat describes the ritual in detail writing, “At night, they would dress in […]
By Leah Elizabeth Comeau. My research is situated at the intersection of the fields of religious history and of material culture. Geographically, I work in South Asia, especially Tamil South India and I utilize an intersectional feminist framework to approach modern and medieval expressions of religion. In my work, I routinely encounter scholars of anthropology, […]
By Grace Ji-Sun Kim. “There is no greater agony, than bearing an untold story inside you” – Maya Angelou The written word is a powerful source of change; it moves people, drawing them out of their familiar realities and bringing them into new ones, imagined and true. It lures us to question what we know […]
By Lai-shan Yip. In February, I participated in a consultation on “South and Southeast Asian Churches Reponses to Human Sexuality and Gender Minorities” sponsored by the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) in collaboration with other ecumenical and non-government organizations in Bangalore, India. I found significance in the theme of extending the queer concern […]