Cuffel / Echevarría / Echevarria Religious Boundaries for Sex, Gender, and Corporeality

Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-1-351-17170-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 206 Seiten

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Religion

The ambiguity concerning the interpretation of the ‘physical body’ in religious thought is not peculiar to any given religion, but is discernible in the scriptures, practices, and disciplines in most of the world’s major religious traditions. This book seeks to address the nuances of difference within and between religious traditions in the treatment and understanding of what constitutes the body as a carrier of religious meaning and/or vindication of doctrine.

Bringing together an international team of contributors from different disciplines, this collection addresses the intersection of religion, gender, corporeality and/or sexuality in various Western and Eastern cultures. The book is divided into two parts. The first is "Physical Bodies", which analyses instances when religious meaning is attributed to the human body’s physicality and its mechanics (in contrast to imagined or metaphorical bodies). The second is "Mystical Bodies", in which the body as either a vehicle or a hindrance for mystical knowledge is explored. The chapters are arranged chronologically and across religious orientations, to offer a differentiated view on the body from a global perspective.

This collection is a comprehensive and exciting exploration of religion and the human body. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars in Religious Studies, Theology, Islamic studies, S. Asian studies, History of Religions and Gender Studies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cuffel, Alexandra

Echevarría, Ana

Echevarria, Ana

Halkias, Georgios T.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Sexualität & Gender in den Religionen
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

Part I Physical Bodies

Chapter 1: Semper aliquid haeraet! The accusation of fornication and of sexualized cults as a means of demarcation in the Bible. By Christian Frével (Ruhr University, Bochum)

Chapter 2: Changing Gender, Becoming Asexual or Acquiring the Marks of the Great Man: Taoist Modes of Sexual Bodily Alteration. By Stephen Eskildsen (University of Tennessee Chattanooga)

Chapter 3: Giving flesh by losing one’s soul? Pregnancy in Islamic/Christian religious perspective. By Ana Echevarria, (UNED, Madrid)

Chapter 4: "Bodies of Praise: Strong Men and Erotic Women in Sinhala Buddhist Poetry" Stephen C. Berkwitz (University of Missouri)

Chapter 5: Hoc est Corpus meum! Body-talk in orthodox Lutheran Protestantism in 18th century Germany. By Knut-Martin Stünkel (Ruhr University, Bochum)

Chapter 6: Fishing for Cod: The Role of the Penis in European Imperial Expansion. By Adam Knobler (Ruhr University Bochum)

Chapter 7: The Problem of a Body: Death, Corruption and Eternal Life in the Sathya Sai Movement. By Tulasi Srinivas (Emerson College, Boston)

Part II Mystical Bodies

Chapter 8: The Dangers of the Body in Early Jewish Mysticism. By Rebecca Lesses (Ithaca College)

Chapter 9: "They will be too scared to notice that they’re naked!" Gender and sex related questions in the Masa’il Abdallah Ibn Salam. By Ulisse Cecini (University Autonoma of Barcelona)

Chapter 10: Embodied and Affective Piety: Ambivalent Models of Manliness in Premodern Islamic Hagiography. By Linda G. Jones (University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)

Chapter 11: Coming Together in the Air: Mysticism and the Queering of Jesus in the Toledot Yeshu. By Alexandra Cuffel (Ruhr University, Bochum)

Chapter 12: Unstable Bodies: Women and the Corporeal in Ethiopian Female Saints’ Hagiographies, 1300-1700. By Selamawit Mecca (Addis Ababa University)

Chapter 13: Mary Magdalene: A paradigmatic mystic in Counter-Reformation Art. By Marion Steinicke (University of Koblenz)

Chapter 14: Embodying the Diamond Sow: Tantric Pilgrimage to the Secret Lotus Land or Mustering the Diamond Sow: Somatic and Internal Geographies in the Secret Lotus Land. By Amelia Hall (Naropa University)

Chapter 15: The Encounter of the Mongolian Pastoral Culture with Buddhist Sexual Morality. By Vesna A. Wallace (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Über Autor(innen)

Alexandra Cuffel is Professor of the history of Jewish Religion at Ruhr University, Germany. Her work focuses on Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, particularly in the realms of inter-religious polemic and gender. She has written articles on gender in Jewish mysticsm, inter-religious polemic, Arabic epics, and shared religious practices, and has published a monograph, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic (2007). She is currently leading a project, "JEWSEAST" (Jews and Christians in the East: Strategies of Interaction from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean) and co-directing a project "The Ten Lost Tribes" A Cross-Cultural Approach".

Ana Echevarría is Profesora titular of Medieval History at UNED, Spain. She works on relations between Muslims and Christians, especially interreligious polemic, Castilian Mudejars, conversion, and crusade. Among her books, Knights in the Borders. The Moorish Guard of the Kings of Castile (1410-1467) (2008) and The City of the Three Mosques: Ávila and its Muslims in the Middle Ages, (2011). She has recently been a Visiting Fellow at the KHK-Dynamics in the History of Religion, Ruhr University, Bochum (Germany), and is currently leading a project about "Mudejars and Moriscos in Castile".

Georgios T. Halkias is Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies, The University of Hong Kong. He specializes on Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhism and inter- and intra-religious contacts in Central Asia. Currently Co-editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Buddhism (OUP) he has worked on several editorial projects including Principle Editor for Tibetan and Central Asian bibliographies on Buddhism and as co-editor for Contemporary Visions in Tibetan Studies. He has many publications including Luminous Bliss: A Religious History of Pure Land Literature in Tibet. He has recently completed a project at the Centre of Buddhist Studies titled "Entangled Histories between East and West: Sources and Interpretations for the Development of Buddhism in Hellenistic Central Asia."