Writing Women's Religious Worlds

In this course we will examine how we can understand and recognize what “counts” as religion—perhaps in new ways—by focusing on the religious lives of women. Our primary texts will be ethnographic studies of women in various religious traditions around the world, including Hindu women in North India, Muslim women in Egypt, and a Vodou priestess in New York. We will examine how women construct their religious identities and negotiate religious authority as public leaders, ritual experts, and healers, and consider how what women say about their own lives and practices may challenge our assumptions of what religion “is” or “does.” We will also consider the ethics of ethnographic approaches to studying religion, particularly in terms of the “self” and “other,” as students develop their own ethnographic practices and writing.