Overview

Global struggles over women's roles, rights, and dress increasingly cast the secular and the religious in tense if not violent opposition. When advocates for equality speak in terms of rights and modern progress, or reactionaries ground their authority in religious and scriptural appeals, both tend to presume women's emancipation is ineluctably tied to secularization. Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference upsets this certainty by drawing on diverse voices and traditions in studies that historicize, question, and test the implicit links between secularism and expanded freedoms for women. Rather than position secularism as the answer to conflicts over gender and sexuality, this volume shows both religion and the secular collaborate in creating the conditions that generate them.

Full Product Details

Author:   Linell E. Cady ,  Tracy Fessenden
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
Imprint:   Columbia University Press
Volume:   14
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.567kg
ISBN:  

9780231162487

ISBN 10:   0231162480
Pages:   344
Publication Date:   05 November 2013
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Language:   English

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments Part 1 by Gendering the Divide 1. Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference: An Introduction, by Linell E. Cady and Tracy Fessenden 2. Secularism and Gender Equality, by Joan Wallach Scott 3. Sexuality and Secularism, by Saba Mahmood 4. Must It Be Either Secular or Religious? Reflections on the Contemporary Journeys of Women's Rights Activists in Egypt, by Azza Karam 5. Religion and Women's Political Mobilization, by Ann Braude Part 2 by Gender and the Privatization of Religion 6. Secular Liberalism, Roman Catholicism, and Social Hierarchies: Understanding Multiple Paths, by Gene Burns 7. Gendering the Secular and Religious in Modern Egypt: Woman, Family, and Nation, by Margot Badran 8. Women, Religion, and Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Zilka Spahi?-Siljak Part 3 by Gender, Sexuality, and the Body Politic 9. Bodies-Politics: Christian Secularism and the Gendering of U.S. Policy, by Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini 10. Crimes of Moral Turpitude: Questions at the Borders of Religion, the Secular, and the U.S. Nation-State, by Molly K. McGarry 11. On French Religions and Their Renewed Embodiments, by Nacira Guenif-Souilamas Part 4 by Bridging the Divide 12. Rescued by Law? Gender and the Global Politics of Secularism, by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd 13. The Brahmin Widow and Female Religious Agency: Anticaste Critique in Two Modern Indian Texts, by Rajeswari Sunder Rajan 14. Issues with Authority: Feminist Commitments in a Late Secular Age, by David Kyuman Kim Bibliography Contributors Index

Reviews

This book both genders and shatters the divide between the secular and the religious in a global context. By historicizing the privatization of both women and religion in modernity, these essays unhinge any simple alignment between feminism and secularism. Cady and Fessenden have produced that rare collection that coheres, a must read for scholars of gender and all those engaged with the question of the secular. This is a book I cannot wait to teach! -- Laura S. Levitt, Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender, Temple University

This exciting volume defamiliarizes our understanding of secularization as process and practice. The contributors to this volume raise profound questions regarding the persistence of 'the religious' as a form of ethicality, as a resistant presence and practice, and as an animating constraint in women's lives. The theoretical range, and global scope of the volume is a remarkable achievement. -- Anupama Rao, Barnard College, Columbia University A collection like this is long overdue. Rather than taking what is often viewed as the high road of secularism, the contributors challenge the ability of both religion and secularism to provide master narratives for the equality of women. This book is a vital contribution to the blueprint for a new feminism that is currently emerging at local, national and global levels. The contributors refuse to accept standard tropes that condemn religion and valourize secularism as women's hero, instead pointing to the ways that the religious and the secular have collaborated to produce oppressive regimes of sexuality and gender. This risky volume opens space for new collaborations and theoretical innovations that challenge standard analyses relying on the religion/secular binary. This volume encourages us to 'imagine differently'. -- Lori G. Beaman, Canada Research Chair in the Contextualization of Religion in a Diverse Canada, University of Ottawa Many feminists have hoped -- and many fundamentalists have feared -- that the decline of religion would lead inevitably to women's liberation. This bold, thought-provoking book shows how, around the world, the gender politics of secularism are confounding the easy assumptions of progressives and conservatives alike. -- Joseph Kip Kosek, Associate Professor of American Studies, George Washington University This book both genders and shatters the divide between the secular and the religious in a global context. By historicizing the privatization of both women and religion in modernity, these essays unhinge any simple alignment between feminism and secularism. Cady and Fessenden have produced that rare collection that coheres, a must read for scholars of gender and all those engaged with the question of the secular. This is a book I cannot wait to teach! -- Laura S. Levitt, Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender, Temple University

Author Information

Linell E. Cady is professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University. Tracy Fessenden is associate professor of religious studies at Arizona State University.

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