Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference

Religion, Culture, and Public Life

by Linell E. Cady (Editor), Tracy Fessenden (Editor)

Global struggles over women's roles, rights, and dress have taken center stage in a drama that casts the secular and the religious in tense if not violent opposition. Advocates for equality speak of the issue in terms of rights and modern progress while reactionaries ground their authority in religious and scriptural appeals. Both sides presume women's emancipation is tied to secularization. This volume upsets these certainties by blending diverse voices and traditions, both secular and religious, in studies historicizing, questioning, and testing the implicit links between secularism and expanded freedoms for women. Rather than treat secularism as the answer to conflicts over gender and sexuality, these essays show how it structures the conditions generating them.

326 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Linell E. Cady is Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict. She received her B.A. from Newton College (1974) and her M.T.S. (1976) and Th.D. from Harvard University (1981). After teaching as an Assistant Professor at St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana, she joined the faculty of Arizona State University in 1981. Her research and teaching interests have focused primarily on the intersections of religion, theology, and the public/private boundary in the United States, and method and theory in the study of religion, with particular attention to the identities of and border between religious studies and theology. Her most extensive treatment of this topic is Religion, Theology, and American Public Life (1993). This topic is also the focus of her co–edited volume Religious Studies, Theology and the University: Conflicting Maps, Changing Terrain (2002). Her current research focuses on the constructions of religions and the secular, and their bearing upon the place of religion in public life within modern pluralistic societies. She is the co–editor (with Sheldon Simon) of Disrupting Violence: Religion and Conflict in South and Southeast Asia (2006). Her extensive administrative experience includes the Chair of Religious Studies, Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Associate Dean for Academic Personnel.

(from http://transhumanism.asu.edu/people/p...)

Reviews

[Emoni · Rating 4 out of 5]

So glad to read an academic book every once and a while that reminds me I’m not crazy. It’s so great to know other people also notice the things I notice and think they are important to talk about for the field, the political landscape, the daily lives of women, and more.

[vam pire · Rating 4 out of 5]

i <3 joan scott