Women and Religion
2018 Women and Religion Panel (Mehta, Sitek, Mannan)
Samira Mehta - Assistant Professor of Women & Gender Studies and Jewish Studies
University of Colorado Boulder
Website: https://www.samiramehta.com/
Samira K. Mehta's research and teaching focus on the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the United States. Mehta’s current project, God Bless the Pill? Sexuality, Contraception, and American Religion examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant voices in competing moral logics of contraception, population control, and eugenics from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Research from this project appears in “Family Planning is a Christian Duty: Religion, Population Control, and the Pill in the 1960s” from Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth- Century United States.
More by Samira Mehta…
“Family Planning is a Christian Duty: Religion, Population Control, and the Pill in the 1960s,” in Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the 20th Century United States, eds. Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather White (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 152-169.
“Prescribing the Diaphragm: Protestants, Jews, Catholics, and a Changing Culture of Contraception,” American Religion 1, no 2 (2020): 27-52.
Jessica Sitek - SUSI Scholar Staff
A common liberal assumption is that women have to be liberated from religion. Jessica researches Judith Plaskow (Jewish scholar trained in Christian systematic theology) and Aminah Wadud (African American convert to Islam). Contemporary scholars are increasingly viewing religion as both part of the problem and part of the solution.
Fouzia Mannan - Associate professor of sociology at East West University in Bangladesh
Fouzia has done anthropological research on women's use of hijab in Bangladesh. The hijab has multiple meanings for women: a symbol of patriarchal control, a symbol of modesty/piety, a symbol of resistance to Western culture.
More by Fouzia Mannan…
Joshi, Deepa, Ben Fawcett, and Fouzia Mannan. “Health, Hygiene and Appropriate Sanitation: Experiences and Perceptions of the Urban Poor.” Environment and Urbanization 23, no. 1 (April 2011): 91–111.
Holmes, Rebecca, Nicola Jones, Fouzia Mannan, Rosana Vargas, Yisak Tafere, and Tassew Woldehanna. "Addressing Gendered Risks and Vulnerabilities through Social Protection: Examples of Good Practice from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Peru." Gender and Development 19, no. 2 (2011): 255-70.
Readings/Resources
Brekus, Catherine A. ed. The Religious History of American Women. University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Cady, Linell E. and Tracy Fessenden, eds. “Gendering the Divide: Religion, the Secular and the Politics of Difference” in Religion, The Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference, pgs 3-24. New York: Columbia University, 2013.
Mahmoud, Saba. The Politics of Piety: the Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject.
Fletcher, Jeanine Hill. Motherhood as Metaphor: Engendering Interreligious Dialogue.
Wadud, Amina. Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam. Oxford Press, 2006.
Plaskow, Judith. The Coming of Lilith; Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics, 1972-2003. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005.
2019 Women and Religion Panel
Lia Howard - Resources: American Grace by Robert Putnam and David Campbell. Pew Research on gender, race, and privilege. Gallup polls are now showing that rates of anger and anxiety are extremely high in the U.S. now. Some women are reluctant to embrace feminism because of perceived emphasis on individual rights. Other important women: Lucretia Mott, Jane Addams.
Lectures
