Women’s History Month Reading
Some Suggested Titles from AAR's Reading Religion
Reading Religion is an openly accessible book review website published by the American Academy of Religion. The site provides up-to-date coverage of scholarly publishing in religious studies, reviewed by scholars with special interest and/or expertise in the relevant subfields. Reviews aim to be concise, comprehensive, and timely.
Below, the editors of Reading Religion have selected some books and reviews from the site and have shared some titles available to review. If you’re interested in reviewing books for Reading Religion, take a look at the guidelines. If there are any books missing from the Reading Religion site that you think should be there, email readingreligion@aarweb.org.
Reviews to Read
Keeping Women in Their Digital Place: The Maintenance of Jewish Gender Norms Online
By Ruth Tsuria
From the review:
“[Tsuria] maintains that religious ideologies interact with modern perspectives online, negotiating and maintaining specific gender norms within contemporary Judaism. At times, her argument evokes feelings of hopelessness regarding Jewish women’s liberation and empowerment. However, she also provides ample evidence of outspoken women online who strive to break taboos and renegotiate what it means to be a Jewish woman.” - Kaitlynn Balmer
Can You Be a Catholic and a Feminist?
By Julie Hanlon Rubio
From the review:
“The strength of this book lies in Rubio’s commitment to critical engagement with both secular feminism and Catholic theology. In working to find common ground, she notes the places where each perspective ‘gets it right,’ where each fails to see something important, and what each contributes to an ongoing conversation. . . . [she] helps us to close the perceived divide between these two approaches to finding justice, community, and care.” - Cynthia L. Cameron
bell hooks' Spiritual Vision: Buddhist, Christian, and Feminist
By Nadra Nittle
From the review:
Excerpt: “[This] is a catalog through hooks’ spiritual journey and the various influences on her life’s work. In this book, Nittle argues that hooks’ work was deeply spiritual in its inspirations and its applications. . . .This is not a book on theology. It is a mixture of biography and historical contextualization of the world hooks lived in.” - Rachel Nireso-Paralkar
The Women's Mosque of America: Authority and Community in US Islam
By Tazeen M. Ali
From the review:
“Ali’s title . . . may catch the reader’s eye, and rightfully so, but it is her compelling exploration of the subtitle . . . that is most impressive for its far-ranging implications and memorable analysis of the workings of authority, community-building, and evolving leadership in a time of global networks and religious fragmentation. . . .[This book] offers a compelling look at women’s religious authority, critical reflection on the racialization of Americanness, and the rising profile of women in civic leadership, even while those very same women are experiencing marginalization in religious organizations.” – Rita Lester
Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia
By Susan H. Brandt
From the review:
“While [this book] is primarily a history of medicine that only discusses religion insofar as it relates to contextualizing Brandt’s sources, scholars of religion will find value in Brandt’s work because of her use of Christian history to outline relationships of care. This book is a great addition to the growing body of scholarship on the history of medicine that acknowledges the influence of religious beliefs upon medical practice.” – David Reed Hall
Available for Review
The Woman Question in Jewish Studies
By Susannah Heschel and Sarah Imhoff
From the publisher:
“The field of Jewish studies has expanded significantly in recent years, with increasing numbers of women entering the field. These scholars have brought new perspectives from studies of women, gender, and sexuality. Yet they have also faced institutional and individual obstacles. In this book, Susannah Heschel and Sarah Imhoff examine the place of women and nonbinary people in Jewish studies, arguing that, for both intellectual and ethical reasons, the culture of the field must change.
Heschel and Imhoff explore quantitative data regarding women as editors of and contributors to academic journals and anthologies, examine data regarding citations of women’s scholarship, and scrutinize women’s presence on panels at academic conferences. They analyze the wider context of the contemporary academy, discussing what is distinctive about Jewish studies. They trace the history of the field, its connections to traditional religious studies, and its growth in US institutions, interspersing this with stories of scholars in the field who have experienced harassment and gender discrimination. Finally, they offer suggestions for a reparative path forward.”
"I Grew Up in the Church": How American Evangelical Women Tell Their Stories
By Bethany Ober Mannon
From the publisher:
“In ‘I Grew Up in the Church’: How American Evangelical Women Tell Their Stories, Bethany Mannon studies the diverse and complex voices of women who have influenced the contemporary evangelical movement in North America. Women across the theological spectrum document fractures in evangelicalism and intervene in those debates using personal narratives that circulate in print and online. Drawing on feminist rhetorical theory and histories of evangelicalism in the United States, ‘I Grew Up in the Church’ argues that these writers model alternatives to the conservative politics, rhetorics of certainty and combat, and rigid gender roles that have been hallmarks of the movement.
This book details the diversity of voices that comprise the evangelical movement today: orthodox evangelicals, ex-evangelicals, progressives, and leaders. By studying texts from 2008 to 2018, Mannon examines how women have responded to a decade when white evangelicalism waned in numbers and influence. She explores the rhetorical power that personal narratives hold for these various groups during that decade of decline. These voices show how, in a diversity of contexts within the evangelical movement, women speak against racism in their faith communities, navigate leadership positions, and pursue rhetorical activist opportunities in conservative settings.”
Sonia Johnson: A Mormon Feminist
By Christine Talbot
From the publisher:
“Few figures in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provoke such visceral responses as Sonia Johnson. Her unrelenting public support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) made her the face of LDS feminism while her subsequent excommunication roiled the faith community.
Christine Talbot tells the story of Sonia’s historic confrontation with the Church within the context of the faith’s first large-scale engagement with the feminist movement. A typical if well-educated Latter-day Saints homemaker, Sonia was moved to action by the all-male LDS leadership’s opposition to the ERA and a belief the Church should stay out of politics. Talbot uses the activist’s experiences and criticisms to explore the ways Sonia’s ideas and situation sparked critical questions about LDS thought, culture, and belief. She also illuminates how Sonia’s excommunication shaped LDS feminism, the Church’s antagonism to feminist critiques, and the Church itself in the years to come.
A revealing and long-overdue account, Sonia Johnson explores the life, work, and impact of the LDS feminist.”
Have You Got Good Religion?: Black Women's Faith, Courage, and Moral Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement
By AnneMarie Mingo
From the publisher:
“What compels a person to risk her life to change deeply rooted systems of injustice in ways that may not benefit her? The thousands of Black Churchwomen who took part in civil rights protests drew on faith, courage, and moral imagination to acquire the lived experiences at the heart of the answers to that question. AnneMarie Mingo brings these forgotten witnesses into the historical narrative to explore the moral and ethical world of a generation of Black Churchwomen and the extraordinary liberation theology they created. These women acted out of belief that what they did was bigger than themselves. Taking as their goal nothing less than the moral transformation of American society, they joined the movement because it was something they had to do. Their personal accounts of a lived religion enacted in the world provide powerful insights into how faith steels human beings to face threats, jail, violence, and seemingly implacable hatred. Throughout, Mingo draws on their experiences to construct an ethical model meant to guide contemporary activists in the ongoing pursuit of justice.
A depiction of moral imagination that resonates today, Have You Got Good Religion? reveals how Black Churchwomen’s understanding of God became action and transformed a nation.”
Hidden Histories: Faith and Black Lesbian Leadership
By Monique Moultrie
From the publisher:
“In Hidden Histories, Monique Moultrie collects oral histories of Black lesbian religious leaders in the United States to show how their authenticity, social justice awareness, spirituality, and collaborative leadership make them models of womanist ethical leadership. By examining their life histories, Moultrie frames queer storytelling as an ethical act of resistance to the racism, sexism, and heterosexism these women experience. She outlines these women’s collaborative, intergenerational, and leadership styles, and their concerns for the greater good and holistic well-being of humanity and the earth. She also demonstrates how their ethos of social justice activism extends beyond LGBTQ and racialized communities and provides other models of religious and community leadership. Addressing the invisibility of Black lesbian religious leaders in scholarship and public discourse, Moultrie revises modern understandings of how race, gender, and sexual identities interact with religious practice and organization in the twenty-first century.”
