http://crr.sagepub.

com/
Religion
Critical Research on
http://crr.sagepub.com/content/1/1/43
The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/2050303213476112
2013 1: 43 Critical Research on Religion
Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza
Critical feminist studies in religion

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at: Critical Research on Religion Additional services and information for

http://crr.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:

http://crr.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions:

http://crr.sagepub.com/content/1/1/43.refs.html Citations:

What is This?

- Apr 1, 2013 Version of Record >>

by guest on June 16, 2014 crr.sagepub.com Downloaded from by guest on June 16, 2014 crr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Article
Critical feminist studies
in religion
Elisabeth Schu ssler Fiorenza
Harvard University, USA
Abstract
Critical feminist studies in religion seek to articulate a theoretical analytics not in terms of gender
and feminine identity but in socio-political terms. They understand wo/men as socio-political
subject-citizens who are producing cultural knowledges and religious discourses in situations of
domination and alienation.
Keywords
critical, feminist studies, religion
A range of dierent feminist socio-political directions and theoretical frameworks exists.
Critical feminist studies in religion, as I have sought to develop them,
1
seek to articulate their
theoretical analytics not in terms of gender and feminine identity but in socio-political terms.
They understand wo/men
2
as socio-political subject-citizens who are producing cultural
knowledges and religious discourses in situations of domination and alienation.
Feminist theory has proposed two dierent social analytics for exploring wo/mens pos-
ition in society and religion: one is the analytics of gender; the other is the analytics of
intersectionality
3
of oppressions, which I have spelled out as an analytics of kyriarchy/
kyriocentrism.
4
This critical analytics must be judged in terms of its heuristic power to
investigate and deconstruct relations of domination as well as to articulate alternative reli-
gious visions for personal and societal change and transformation. Such critical feminist
studies in religion and the*logy
5
have as a dialogue partner critical theory, not of the French
6
variety but of the Frankfurt school.
7
I understand critical theory in terms of the Frankfurt Schools (Bohman, 2005) argument
that a theory that is critical must meet three criteria at one and the same time:
(I) It has to be explanatory; that is, it must develop a theory of society that explains
what is wrong. According to Max Horkheimer, (1982: 244) a theory that is critical
Corresponding author:
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Harvard University, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Email: eschussler@hds.harvard.edu
1(1) 4350
! The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2050303213476112
crr.sagepub.com
by guest on June 16, 2014 crr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
aims to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them. I have
developed such a theory by explicating the structures of domination not just in terms
of kyriarchal gender but also in terms of kyriarchal intersectionality.
(II) Such a critical theory must secondly be practical, i.e. it must identify the agents that
seek to bring about change. With Habermas, I see the new social movements
(Edwards, 2004) in general and the global womens movements in particular as such
agents of change. Critical feminist studies in religion not only seek to understand and
explain religion but also to change its kyriarchal formations.
(III) Finally, a critical theory must be normative, i.e. it must clearly articulate practical
goals, ethical norms, and theoretical visions for a dierent future free from domin-
ation. Critical feminist intersectional studies in religion articulate such a normative
theory and practice whereas gender hides its theoretical normativity in and through its
naturalizing discourses. Hence, critical feminist studies in religion must be careful not
to take over critical theorys gender analysis.
In her very signicant study of critical theory, Marsha Aileen Hewitt has amply documented
the sexist moments within Critical Theory that surface in its idealization and reication of
women (Hewitt, 1995: 4). Despite this result, she argues that critical theory is signicant for
articulating a critical feminist theory of religion, although its credibility is questionable in
feminist terms. The*logical discourses, in her view, are, however, so intertwined and
embedded in the status quo (Hewitt, 1995: XI) that they can no longer formulate emanci-
patory feminist visions but must be left behind.
I would argue to the contrary, that critical feminist studies which seek to address the ques-
tions and oppression of wo/men in religion, that is of wo/men who are committed members
of religious communities, must be religiousthe*logicalif they should be able to mobilize
wo/mens internalized religious convictions for doing the critical work of deconstructing reli-
gious-oppressive identity formations. Critical feminist studies in religion have both a critical
deconstructive task of denaturalizing hegemonic religious kyriarchal relations and a recon-
structive the*logical task of envisioning a dierent world, society, and religious community in
which wo/men can exercise their birthright of fully entitled and responsible citizenship.
One has not only to theorize kyriarchy as an analytic heuristic concept that can articulate
the multiplicative intersectionality of the discourses and structures of domination but also to
envision a positive alternative, which I have called the ekkl esia of wo/men, i.e. the con-
gressthe coming togetherof wo/men as an alternative socio-religious theoretical and
practical vision. Such a feminist religious world-making which seeks to articulate a radical
democratic alternative space to kyriarchal relations of domination has been, and is again and
again realized in and through emancipatory movements in religion.
Insofar as the radical democratic vision of the congress of wo/men annunciating the
equal dignity and power of the many (Hannah Arendt) has been realized historically and
practically only within and despite of kyriarchal democracy, it is necessary to qualify the
democratic Greek term ekkl esia, the assembly of full citizens, with wo/men. Such an
oxymoronic marker is necessary as long as wo/men are not full decision-making citizens
in academy, society, and religion. In short, critical feminist studies in religion, I argue, have
to work with a radical democratic, feminist political rather than just an anthropological or
cultural theory of society and religion.
A critical theory of religion must be aware of its rhetoricality and articulate its social
location, epistemic interests, and practical functions for changing relations of domination.
44 Critical Research on Religion 1(1)
by guest on June 16, 2014 crr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
In order to sustain such a critical theory of religion, I submit, feminist studies in religion
must remain religious or the*logical in the broadest sense of the word. Feminist inquiry
needs to locate itself within religion rather than just deconstruct and objectify religion as the
other, making it an object of the scholarly, allegedly value-neutral gaze.
A radical criticism of religion, i.e. one going to the roots of the tradition, has to come
from within a particular religion if such a radical critique should not lead simply to the
rejection of wo/mens religiosity as false consciousness or to provoke an apologetics of the
kyriarchal status quo rather than engendering the transformation of kyriarchal societies and
religions. In short, I agree with Hewitt that critical feminist and liberationist studies in
religion need a critical theory of religion that is explanatory, practical, normative, and
self-reexive. However, they need not only break through the established boundaries of
the*logy (Hewitt, 1995: 3) but also through those of the study of religion.
A critical feminist analytic needs to conceptualize the study of religion as a site of struggle
over meaning, ethics, and the*logy. Insofar as such a critical approach exposes and indicts
structures of subordination, exploitation, and oppression in society and religion, it under-
mines the structures of othering, silencing, and exclusion inscribed in religion so that the
ethos of religious studies is transformed. Critical feminist scholarship in religion, I argue,
may neither subscribe to a scientist disciplinary ethos nor advocate parochial the*logical
interests but must critically study and evaluate religion and the*ology as public discursive
sites of struggle over meaning, visions, and values with respect to all wo/mens wellbeing.
Consequently, such a critical approach to the study of religion and the*logy has to
re-conceptualize the discourses of the discipline in terms of a critical rhetoric
8
rather than
in terms of positivist science.
Religious and the*logical studies, I argue, need to develop an ethos of inquiry that is
able to critically display and reect on the rhetoricality of all knowledge, be it scientic
or otherwise. Because scholarly discourse always works with probabilities rather than
certainties and speaks from a particular social location to an interested audience, it is best
understood in rhetorical terms. In order to bring about change in the ethos and ethics of
the discipline the academic study of religion and the*logy needs to develop a rhetoric
of inquiry that is not only able to critically and systematically reect on the discursive
practices of religious communities, but also to foster communication and respect between
them.
Critical feminist studies have sought to contextualize the academic discourses on religion
historically and politically as well as to bring to the fore their gendered, class, national, and
racialized character. In particular, feminist scholars have challenged the scientist object-
ivist and value-free ethos of religious studies as serving colonial interests.
First: Critical feminist scholarship has shown that, in modernity, religion has been fem-
inized. Religion has been conceptualized as belonging to the private feminine, emotional,
esthetic sphere over and against which the public rational, culturally authoritative masculine
sphere of progress, rationality, subjectivity, and modernity has been dened.
Since the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America, institutionalized religions have
been relegated to the private sphere of individualistic piety, charitable work, and the culti-
vation of home and family. The culture of silencing and exclusion that has marginalized all
the others of elite Western Man has also congured the public location and social position
of religious studies. Just as woman in modernity, so also has religion been relegated to the
private sphere and has been made an aair of the heart. Consequently, engaging religion
has become a private matter restricted to individual spiritual edication and ecclesiastical
Schussler Fiorenza 45
by guest on June 16, 2014 crr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
use, because the*logy is not considered to be a science and reason is dened in contradis-
tinction to religion.
In modernity the concept of religion was invented to operate within the limits of reason
alone. It was feminized insofar as European Christianity was dislodged from its hegemonic
role, restricted to the private sphere and turned into a civilizing project of colonialism.
9
Religion, just as wo/men and primitive peoples, belonged to the childhood of man-
kind, which in modernity has progressed to masculine adulthood. In the process of religious
privatization and cultural feminization, the clergy and the*logy lost their privileged intel-
lectual status and came to be treated like wo/men in polite society. This feminization of
religion has led both to the emasculation of the*logy and clergy in society and to the
reassertion of their masculine roles in the*logy, church, and the home.
The discourse on the Eternal Feminine or the Cult of True Womanhood, which I have
dubbed the discourse on the White Lady, was developed in tandem with Western colon-
ization and romanticism that celebrated Christian white elite European women/ladies as
paradigms of civilized and cultured womanhood. This ideology functioned to legitimate
both the exclusion of elite wo/men from positions of power in society and church and at
the same time to make them colonial representatives who mediated European culture, reli-
gion, and civilization to the so-called savages.
This identity-politics of the Eternal Feminine and the cult of the White Lady is a
projection of elite, Western, educated gentlemen and clerics who stress the complementary
nature of wo/men to that of men in order to maintain a special kyriarchal status for upper
class white wo/men. This construct does not have the liberation of every wo/man as its goal
but seeks to release the repressed feminine in order to make men whole.
Associated with this cult of the White Lady was and is a spirituality of self-alienation,
submission, service, self-abnegation, dependence, manipulating power, backbiting, power-
lessness, beauty and body regimen, duplicity and helplessnessfeminine behaviors that
are inculcated in and through cultural socialization, spiritual direction, and ascetic discip-
lines such as dieting and cosmetic surgery. In and through traditional spirituality, wo/men
internalize that they are not made in the Divine image because G*d is not She but He, Lord/
Slave-Master/Father/Male. They are told that if they fulll their religious and cultural call-
ing to supplement and complement the Divine Masculine Other, they will fulll their Divine
feminine calling, albeit in a subordinate mode. In both cases cultural and religious structures
of self-alienation and domination are kept in place in and through spirituality and the
the*logical articulation of the Divine as Lord in masculinist and imperialist terms.
Second: Critical postcolonial feminist studies, moreover, have argued that the study of
religion has its roots not only in the European Enlightenment university but also in the
history of Western colonialism. Like the White Lady, Christianity functioned to both
spread Western culture and to ameliorate the horrors of imperialism. Its task was to civil-
ize the savages, who were understood as untamed nature. The Western discourses on
femininity and female nature have their socio-political contexts in this colonial exercise of
power. Both anthropology and comparative religious studies have their origin in such a
colonial context (Chidester, 2000: 430432).
Because gender and religion/the*logy are not separate discrete discourses but inform and
construct each other, the modern construction of religion and the feminine has also shaped
colonial discourses on gender relations; colonial discourses constructed colonial man and
his culture as eeminate, emotional, superstitious and primitive. Cultural decolonization
discourses have rejected Western feminism and called, for example, on the black man to
46 Critical Research on Religion 1(1)
by guest on June 16, 2014 crr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
reclaim his manhood. Whether they are politically conservative or emancipatory, many
nationalist and fundamentalist movements, therefore, use religion and woman both as
identity- and as boundary-markers.
As Nira Yuval-Davis (1997: 67) has pointed out, female gurations such as mother
India, lady liberty, or mother church symbolize in many cultures and religions the
identity of the community or collectivity. Fundamentalist movements are political move-
ments who use cultural and religious traditions as symbolic border guards. Gender symbols,
control of wo/men, and the wellbeing of the patriarchal family, appeals to religious laws,
specic cultural codes of dress and behaviorall these become central to the maintenance of
traditional values and the construction of national identity. Such rhetorical identity con-
structions can be articulated both in the name of emancipation and in the interest of the
hegemonic order and the control of wo/men.
Third: Although, like wo/men, religion has no public presence in the Enlightenment uni-
versity, both religion and wo/men are crucial in maintaining public interest in the antithetical
other and in shaping cultural and communal self-identity. Whereas postcolonial scholars
have underscored the colonialist conceptualization of religion and the imperialist functions
of the positivist study of religion, feminist religious and the*logical studies continue to
remain critical of the positivist articulations of the academic study of religion as hard
science that is gendered in masculinist terms. As Randi Warne has observed:
Unacknowledged in this version of scientic objectivity is the male gender- embeddedness of the
vast majority of practitioners and their thoroughgoing implication in the prescriptive gender
ideology of androcentrism in its specic nineteenth and twentieth century cultural form of
separate spheres.
10
The political context and rhetorical situation in which feminist as well as malestream
research takes place today is constituted by the resurgence of the religious Right around
the world claiming the power to name and to dene the true nature of religion.
11
The
interconnection between religious antidemocratic arguments and the debate with regard to
wo/mens proper place and role is not accidental or just of intra-religious signicance.
12
If one asks why critical feminist, postcolonial, or LGBT scholarship not taken seriously
but often evokes violent public reactions, one is justied in suggesting that the reason is the
refusal of such emancipatory scholarship to shroud its work in the cloak of disinterestedness.
William Arnal (1997: 317) has pointed out that the reactions to feminist or postcolonial
scholarship reveal what is ultimately at stake in the desire for objectivity: a desire to view the
object of ones inquiry through the lens of things-as-they-are. The distinction between a fact
and a value is itself not based on fact, but on a dichotomy between things as they are and
things as one wishes them to be; the removal of so-called value from scholarship is really the
removal of hopesomething that is not central or necessary to the daily ideological work of
the privileged.
If academic scholarship in religion is to overcome the tendency of the general public to
feminize religious discourses as privatized religious practices, it needs to investigate the
structural and ideological constraints that in modernity have prohibited not only wo/men
but also religion from eectively speaking in public.
Fourth: Critical feminist and postcolonial theories have problematized and unmasked the
discourses of the science of religion as ideological operations that ontologize, essentialize,
reify, authorize, valorize, naturalize, normalize, or pathologize relations of domination such
as gender, race, or class. The notion of sui generis religion has been studied and critically
Schussler Fiorenza 47
by guest on June 16, 2014 crr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
evaluated by Russell T. McCutcheon. He argues that such a conceptualization has been used
not only to constitute and institutionalize the eld of religious studies but also to dene its
research object as an apolitical, fetishized, and sacrosanct area of study (McCutcheon, 1997:
26)excluding or peripheralizing both the subject of inquiry and the social and political
contents in dening what really counts as religious or constitutes the uniquely religious.
Such malestream discourses on religion represent the homo religiosus or the biblical
hero as a collective subject, which is undierentiated by race, gender, class, ethnicity, or
age. This view from above is underscored not only through the sui generis nature of
religion but also through the emphasis given to religious texts and the privileging of scholarly
elites. Wo/men who have been excluded from the articulation, proclamation, and interpret-
ation of religious classics such as the Bible or the Koran were thereby excluded from the
higher levels of religious authority.
Rather than essentializing and masculinizing the notion of religion, religion and
the*logy must be redened in critical liberationist feminist terms. In Rosalind Shaws
(2000: 73) words: By re-conceptualizing power as integral toas opposed to a detachable
dimension ofreligion, feminist religious studies has the potential to generate conceptual
change and renewal.
In sum, critical feminist studies in religion have greatly contributed to a dierent self-
understanding of religion and the discipline of religious or the*logical studies by insisting
that both academic feminist and religious/the*logical studies must remain accountable to
social movements for change. An explicit connection between feminist critiques and social
change has been made in critical feminist studies in religion from its very beginnings. Critical
feminist studies in religion and the*logy have consistently argued that we need to study
religion because it has played, and still plays, a key role in both wo/mens oppression and
liberation (Jasper, 1999). Hence, a central task consists in understanding the implication of
religion in continuing political exploitation of wo/men as well as its power to inspire wo/men
for active participation in socialpolitical feminist change.
To a much greater extent than feminist scholars in other areas, feminists in religion and
the*logy have sustained strong connections to wo/mens communities outside the academy.
Much work of critical feminist studies in religion has been generated and challenged by wo/
men in and outside organized religions who search for a feminist spirituality and politics of
meaning for their lives. Conversely, feminist scholars are also involved either in traditional
religious feminist groups or in Goddess and spirituality movements that have critically
challenged and enriched the*logical articulations and religious formations (Plaskow, 1993).
By conceptualizing religious and the*logical studies as critical rhetoricalpolitical eman-
cipatory practices, I have argued here, that one can avoid the positivist modernist snare of
identity politics and objectivist reication. Only if academic religious and the*logical schol-
arship becomes more feminist, i.e. conscious of its socio-political kyriarchal locations and
cultural functions as well as developing a critical self-reexivity in its methods and research
programs, can it rearticulate itself as a critical emancipatory academic discipline that no
longer serves to legitimate relations of domination.
Notes
1. See my book (Schu ssler Fiorenza, 2004).
2. In order to lift into consciousness the linguistic violence of so-called generic male-centered language,
I use the term wo/men and not men in an inclusive way. I suggest that whenever you see
48 Critical Research on Religion 1(1)
by guest on June 16, 2014 crr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
wo/men you understand it in a generic inclusive sense. Wo/men includes men, s/he includes he,
and fe/male includes male. Feminist studies of language have shown that Western, kyriocen-
tricthat is, master, lord, father, male centeredlanguage systems understand language as
both generic and as gender-specific. Wo/men always must think at least twice, if not three-
times, and adjudicate whether we are meant or not by so-called generic terms such as men,
humans, Americans, or citizens. The writing of wo/men with a slash re-defines wo/men not only
in linguistic but also in socio-political terms.
3. For the development of intersectionality as a heuristic concept, see Collins (1998), Davis (2008),
Nash (2008), and Segal and Martinez (2007).
4. My book (Schu ssler Fiorenza, 1992) argues that critical feminist theory replace the analytic cate-
gories of patriarchy/androcentrism with those of kyriarchy, which is derived from the Greek
words: kyrios (lord/slavemaster/father/husband/elite/propertied/educated man) and archein (to
rule, dominate) and kyriocentrism. In classical antiquity, the rule of the kyrios to whom disen-
franchised men and all wo/men were subordinated is best characterized as kyriarchy. Theoretically,
kyriarchy is to be understood as a complex pyramidal system of interlocking multiplicative social
and religious structures of super-ordination and sub-ordination, of ruling and oppression.
Kyriarchal relations of domination are built on elite male property rights as well as on the exploit-
ation, dependency, inferiority, and obedience of wo/men, who signify all those subordinated. Such
kyriarchal relations are still today at work in the multiplicative intersectionality of class, race,
gender, ethnicity, empire, and other structures of discrimination. The different sets of relations of
domination shift historically and produce a different constellation of domination in different times
and cultures. Modern democracies are still structured as complex pyramidal political systems of
superiority and inferiority, of dominance and subordination.
5. Because G*d is neither masculine (theos) nor feminine (thea), I am writing theology/the*logy,
which means speaking about G*d with an asterisk to indicate the inability of our language to
express the Divine.
6. See Maggie Kim et al. (1993) and Joy et al. (2002).
7. See Agger (1998). For an excellent feminist critique of the Frankfurt School see Hewitt (1995).
8. See my books (Schu ssler Fiorenza, 1999, 2007, 2009) for more elaborated arguments.
9. For this argument see my book (Schu ssler Fiorenza, 2011).
10. Warne (2000: 140155); see also Warne (2001).
11. See the variegated contributions in Ku ng and Moltmann (1992).
12. See especially the declaration of the Division for the Advancement of Women 1994.
References
Agger B (1998) Critical Social Theories: An Introduction. Colorado: Westview Press.
Arnal W (1997) Making and re-making the Jesus-sign: Contemporary markings on the body of Christ.
In: Arnal W and Desjardins M (eds) Whose Historical Jesus? (Studies in Christianity and Judaism
7). Waterloo: Wilfried Laurier University Press, pp.308319.
Bohman J (2005) Critical theory. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: http://plato.stan-
ford.edu/entries/critical-theory/ (accessed 22 December 2012).
Chidester D (2000) Colonialism. In: Braun W and McCutcheon RT (eds) Guide to the Study of
Religion. London: Cassell, pp.430432.
Collins PH (1998) Fighting Words. Black Women and the Search for Justice. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Davis K (2008) Intersectionality as buzzword: A sociology of science perspective on what makes a
feminist theory successful. Feminist Theory 9(1): 6785.
Division for the Advancement of Women (1994) International standards of equality and religious freedom:
Implications for the status of women. In: Moghadam V M (ed.) Identity Politics and Women: Cultural
Reassertions and Feminisms in International Perspective. Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 425438.
Schussler Fiorenza 49
by guest on June 16, 2014 crr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Edwards G (2004) Habermas and social movements: Whats new? The Sociological Review 52(June):
113130.
Hewitt MA (1995) Critical Theory of Religion: A Feminist Analysis. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.
Horkheimer M (1982) Critical Theory. New York: Seabury Press.
Jasper A (1999) Feminism and Religion. In: Gamble S (ed.) The Routledge Critical Dictionary of
Feminism and Postfeminism. New York: Routledge, pp.158167.
Joy M, OGrady K and Poxon JL (2002) French Feminists on Religion: A Reader. London: Routledge.
Ku ng H and Moltmann J (1992) Fundamentalism as an Ecumenical Challenge. London: Concilium,
SCM Press.
McCutcheon RT (1997) Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics
of Nostalgia. New York: Oxford University Press.
Maggie Kim C W, St. Ville SM and Simonatis S M (eds) (1993) Transgurations: Theology and the
French Feminists. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.
Nash JC (2008) Rethinking intersectionality. Feminist Review 89(1): 115.
Plaskow J (1993) We are also your sisters: The development of womens studies in religion. Womens
Studies Quarterly 21(1): 921.
Schu ssler Fiorenza E (1992) But She Said. Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Schu ssler Fiorenza E (1999) Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Schu ssler Fiorenza E (2004) Grenzen uberschreiten. Der theoretische Anspruch feministischer Theologie.
Ausgewahlte Aufsatze. Mu nster: LIT Verlag.
Schu ssler Fiorenza E (2007) The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press.
Schu ssler Fiorenza E (2009) Democratizing Biblical Studies: Toward an Emancipatory Educational
Space. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
Schu ssler Fiorenza E (2011) Transforming Vision: Explorations in Feminist The*logy. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press.
Segal MT and Martinez TA (eds) (2007) Intersections of Gender, Race, and Class: Readings for a
Changing Landscape. Los Angeles: Roxbury.
Shaw R (2000) Feminist anthropology and the gendering of religious studies. In: King U (ed.) Religion
and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Warne RR (2000) Gender. In: Braun W and McCutcheon RT (eds) Guide to the Study of Religion.
London: Continuum, pp.140155.
Warne RR (2001) (En)gendering religious studies. In: Juschka DM (ed.) Feminism in the Study of
Religion: A Reader. New York: Continuum, pp.147156.
Yuval-Davis N (1997) Gender & Nation. London: SAGE.
Author biography
Elisabeth Schu ssler Fiorenza, Krister Stendahl Professor at Harvard University Divinity
School, is the co-founder and senior editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
and was the rst wo/man scholar elected as president of the Society of Biblical Literature. In
recognition of her work she has received several honorary doctorates from American
Colleges, Divinity Schools and European Universities. In 2001, she was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She combines her scholarly work on biblical
interpretation with her pioneering research in feminist theology, rhetoric, and hermeneutics.
The list of her book publications is extensive. Her latest work is Transforming Vision
Explorations in Feminist The*logy.
50 Critical Research on Religion 1(1)
by guest on June 16, 2014 crr.sagepub.com Downloaded from