This course, offered under the auspices of the Lady Fatima Endowed Chair in Women and Divinity, will advance the mission of the Chair and the Comparative Humanities program by deepening student knowledge and understanding of the interaction of ideal religious and cultural systems with socio-historical realities with particular attention to gender. In doing so we aim to introduce students to key debates and emergent dialogues at the intersection of religion and gender. Throughout the course students will study and analyze the role of major religions such as Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism in mapping understandings of gender on concepts of the divine and the cosmic order that are then inculcated through textual interpretations, embodied rituals, legal practices, and valorized social structures such as concepts of family and religious leadership roles. Students will also come to critically examine processes of modernity and social change that currently challenge some of these long-standing gendered norms and practices while remaining critical of many Eurocentric assumptions underlying dominant frameworks for assessing religious knowledge.
In this course, we will challenge conventional understandings of both gender and religion by examining how they intersect, shape, and sometimes contradict one another. We’ll explore questions like: How do religious rituals shape our understanding of gender within specific cultural contexts? What happens when we reflect on the gender of God—or consider how a seemingly genderless transcendent being takes on gendered meanings in human experience? How have masculinist ideals become central to many religious identities?
Through case studies, theoretical readings, and critical discussion, and fieldwork projects students will examine the gaps and contradictions that emerge when we try to map gender categories onto religious practices and beliefs. Our goal is not to arrive at simple answers, but to develop more nuanced ways of thinking about how gender and religion work together to shape human experience.
