Transforming Bodies and Religions: Powers and Agencies in Europe

Description

This book sheds an interdisciplinary light on 'transforming bodies' bodies that have been subjected to, contributed to, or have resisted social transformations within religious or secular contexts in contemporary Europe. It explores the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and religion that underpin embodied transformations. Using post-secularist, postcolonial and gender/queer perspectives, it aims to gain a better understanding of the orchestrations and effects of larger social transitions related to religion. This volume is the outcome of the intensive collaboration of the authors, who for years have been meeting regularly in Utrecht, the Netherlands, to discuss themes related to religion and 'the challenge of difference', with an added afterword by Prof. Pamela Klassen from the University of Toronto. The book is divided in three subsections that focus on particular types of embodiment: body politics in governmental and NGO organisations; the role of the body in literary and/or autobiographical narratives; and ethnographic case studies of bodies in daily life. Doing so, it provides an innovative exploration of contemporary religion and the body. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Theology, and Philosophy. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents List of contributors Acknowledgements Transforming bodies and religions: powers and agencies in Europe Introduction to governing bodies 1 The secular body in the Dutch field of sexual health 2 SRHR, the liberated body, and the primacy of conscience: probing beyond the secular/religious binary 3 The religious embodiments of Drag Sethlas: blasphemous popular art and the religious/secular divide before the Spanish court Introduction to narrating bodies 4 Negotiating transformation and difference: women’s stories of conversion to Judaism and Islam 5 Embodying transformation: religious and gender transitions in Jewish autobiography 6 “The Richest Material for Moral Reflection”: narrated bodies and narrative ethics 7 Exploring new vocabularies in conversations about religion, race, politics, and justice Introduction to negotiating bodies 8 (Re)Negotiating embodiment when moving out of Islam: an empirical inquiry into ‘A Secular Body’ 9 Vacillating in and out of whiteness: non­religiosity and racial (dis)identification among the Iranian­Dutch 10 Women wearing the tallit: tracing gender, belonging, and conversion of new Jewish women Afterword: corporate, corporal, collective: reflections on bodies, genres, and the ongoing troubling of the categories of religion and the secular Index