By Cynthia Moe-Lobeda. Adapted from her talk given at the Feminist Liberation Theologians’ Network meeting on November 16, 2018. Resistance to advanced global capitalism (also known as neo-liberalism and as corporate-and-finance-driven capitalism) has generated a vital movement to forge alternative forms of economic life on global, national, and local levels. These alternatives share the three […]
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 Karen Ross. As a Catholic adolescent girl, I received many messages both implicitly and explicitly about my body and my sexuality. I noticed from an early age that within my Catholic cultural environment, touching or even talking about your genitalia and reproductive organs as a young woman was inappropriate, and even dirty, especially outside […]
“To be alive at such an epoch is a privilege, to be a woman then is sublime.”[1] These are the words of scholar and activist, Anna Julia Cooper. Her historical assessment is piercing as she wrestles with the “unproclaimed influence of black women” in her book, A Voice from the South by A Black Woman from […]
By Lauren D. Sawyer. For the past several months, I have been informally gathering stories from my friends about their experiences with evangelical purity culture, the world of abstinence pledges, purity rings, and kissing dating goodbye. I caught up with my friend Grace, who reminded me of the Spiritual Emphasis Week we attended at our […]
By Amanda Baugh. “Did you know that Disney Land is in Anaheim?” my four-year old son asked eagerly from the backseat as we began our spring break road trip. Although we were heading toward Anaheim, my husband and I had not mentioned that particular attraction. Instead, we were travelling so I could conduct research on religion […]
By Justine Howe. Omer, the instructor for the adult education class on the Qur’an I was observing, stood at the front of the classroom and gestured to where I was sitting at a desk in a public high school classroom. “Most of you remember Tina,” he said. “She is a doctoral student who is writing a […]
By Katherine Dugan. I became a single mom officially one month before I began ethnographic work among a group of young adult millennial-generation Catholic missionaries who have traditional ideals of marriage and families. I received the final divorce paperwork and celebrated my daughter’s second birthday weeks before I started spending hours each week in Bible study […]
In the Fall of 2009, I began ethnographic research with Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jewish women in Jerusalem, looking into their reproductive ethics. Haredi women have the highest birth rate in Israel, around 6-8 children per lifetime, and they strictly adhere to religious laws, as dictated by their rabbis. I wanted to know how they made reproductive […]
There is a lot of talk these days about women in the academy and the obstacles they face in the form of sexual harassment, overloaded service requirements, and biased teaching evaluations, just to name a few. Although universities may not be the friendliest place for women, particularly those with families, sometimes parents find work-life balance […]