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Women studies as a distinct field emerged in India in the mid-seventies. But preoccupation with the position of women dates back to more than a century and a half. By the use of methods of history, literary criticism and analysis of discourse, this volume seeks not only to illustrate the broadening of the sphere of women studies in India in recent years, but also to point to the need for relating ideas about women and gender relations to the social and economic forces that shape history.
Through its missionary, pedagogical, and scientific accomplishments, the Society of Jesus-known as the Jesuits-became one of the first institutions with a truly "global" reach, in practice and intention. The Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits offers a critical assessment of the Order, helping to chart new directions for research at a time when there is renewed interest in Jesuit studies. In particular, the Handbook examines their resilient dynamism and innovative spirit, grounded in Catholic theology and Christian spirituality, but also profoundly rooted in society and cultural institutions. It also explores Jesuit contributions to education, the arts, politics, and theology, among others. The v...
"At last, she arrives at the fatal end of the plank . . . and, with her hands crossed over her chest, falls straight downward, suspended for a moment in the air before being devoured by the burning pit that awaits her. . . ." This grisly 1829 account by Pierre Dubois demonstrates the usual European response to the Hindu custom of satis sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands—horror and revulsion. Yet to those of the Hindu faith, not least the satis themselves, this act signals the sati's sacredness and spiritual power. Ashes of Immortality attempts to see the satis through Hindu eyes, providing an extensive experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in northern India, where the state-banned practice of sati reemerged in the 1970s, as well as extensive textual analysis, Weinberger-Thomas constructs a radically new interpretation of satis. She shows that their self-immolation transcends gender, caste and class, region and history, representing for the Hindus a path to immortality.
Women's leadership in Spiritualism and Christian Science / Ann Braude -- The feminism of "Universal Brotherhood," women in the Theosophical Movement / Robert Ellwood and Catherine Wessinger -- Emma Curtis Hopkins, a feminist of the 1880's and mother of new thought / J. Gordon Melton -- Myrtle Fillmore and her daughters, an observation and analysis of the role of women in Unity / Dell deChant -- Woman guru, woman roshi, the legitimation of female religious leadership in Hindu and Buddhist groups in America / Catherine Wessinger. -- Part 3. Contemporary women as creators of religion: Ritual validations of clergywomen's authority in the African American Spiritual churches of New Orleans / David C. Estes --. - Twentieth-century women's religion as seen in the feminist spirit.
The Sai Baba movement, centered on the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), today attracts a global following from Japan to South Africa. Regarded as a divine incarnation, Sathya Sai Baba traces his genealogy to Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918), a mendicant in colonial India identified with various Sufi and devotional genealogies. The movement, thus, has “roots” in Shirdi Sai Baba but as it globalizes, it has developed conjunctions with other religious traditions, New Religious movements, and New Age ideas. This book offers an account of the Sai Baba movement as a pathway for charting the varied cartographies, sensory formations, and cultural memories implicated in urbanization and globalization. It traverses the terrain between social theories for the study of religion and cities ---themselves a product of modernity---and the radical, creative, and unexpected modernity of contemporary religious movements. It is based on ethnographic research carried out in India, Kenya, and the US.
This book examines how the women's movement is affecting traditional religions and civilizations throughout the world. It reviews cases of global impact in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Australian aboriginal religion. This volume completes the trilogy devoted to women in world religions, edited by Arvind Sharma. The second book in the series is entitled Religion and Women. The present work surveys the position of women in the religious traditions covered in the first volume of the trilogy, Women in World Religions, placing these traditions in contemporary context.
Addressing religion and feminism on a global scale, this unprecedented book contains a nuanced and fine-tuned treatment of seven of the world's religions from a feminist perspective by leading women scholars. The fact that these authors share a dual but undivided commitment both to themselves as women and to their traditions as adherents imparts to their voices a prophetic quality, and if Mahatma Gandhi is to be believed, even scriptural value.
Political Aesthetics highlights the complex and ambiguous connections of aesthetics with social, cultural and political experiences in contemporary societies. If today aesthetics seems a rather overused term, mixing a variety of historical realities and complex personal states of being, its relevance as a connecting agent between individual, state and society is stronger than ever. The actual context of political and economic crisis generates new relations between official imposed aesthetics and the resistance and critiques they trigger. Considered beyond the poles of power and protest, the book examines how traditional or innovative artistic practices may acquire unexpected capacities of subversion. It nourishes the current debate around the new political stakes of aesthetics as an inviolable right of ordinary citizens, an essential element of empowerment and agency in a democratic every day. It will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, political culture and political aesthetics, as well as critical sociology and history. It will also be useful for some broad courses in media studies, cultural studies, and sociology.
Revered by Buddhists in the United States and China, Master Sheng-yen shares his wisdom and teachings in this first comprehensive English primer of Chan, the Chinese tradition of Buddhism that inspired Japanese Zen. Often misunderstood as a system of mind games, the Chan path leads to enlightenment through apparent contradiction. While demanding the mental and physical discipline of traditional Buddhist doctrine, it asserts that wisdom (Buddha-nature) is innate and immediate in all living beings, and thus not to be achieved through devotion to the strictures of religious practice. You arrive without departing. Master Sheng-yen provides an unprecedented understanding of Chan, its precepts, an...
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have minorities from the Indian sub-continent amongst their population. The East African Indians mostly reside in the main cities, particularly Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Mombasa, Kampala; they can also be found in smaller urban centres and in the remotest of rural townships. They play a leading social and economic role as they work in business, manufacturing and the service industry, and make up a large proportion of the liberal professions. They are divided into multiple socio-religious communities, but united in a mutual feeling of meta-cultural identity. This book aims at painting a broad picture of the communities of Indian origin in East Africa, striving to include changes that have occurred since the end of the 1980s. The different contributions explore questions of race and citizenship, national loyalties and cosmopolitan identities, local attachment and transnational networks. Drawing upon anthropology, history, sociology and demography, Indian Africa depicts a multifaceted population and analyses how the past and the present shape their sense of belonging, their relations with others, their professional and political engagement.