Scholarship

Books by Rebecca Todd Peters

Ambitious in method and scope, Trust Women skillfully interweaves political analysis, sociology, ancient and modern philosophy, Christian tradition, and medical history, and grounds its analysis in the material reality of women’s lives and their decisions about sexuality, abortion, and child-bearing. It ends with a powerful re-imagining of the moral contours of pre-natal life and suggests we recognize pregnancy as a time when a woman must assent, again and again, to an ethical relationship with the prenate.

For the last fifty years, feminist theologians have sought to reimagine Christian theology in ways that speak to the realities and complexities of women’s lives. They have also sought to use women’s experience as the starting point for theological reflection in the same way that men’s lives have shaped the history of Christian theology for the past 2000 years. In Encountering the Sacred, feminist Christian scholars of theology and religion use the tools of their trade to examine powerful personal life experiences and to search for new and empowering ways of understanding the power of the sacred as they have experienced it.

Addressing the economic and social structures of our globalized context, Solidarity Ethics shows how a concrete ethics rooted in the Christian tradition of justice and transformation is deeply informed by solidarity and relationality. Utilizing these theologically rich resources, an ethics of relational reflection, action, and construction is provided as an avenue for building viable strategies for social transformation.

Teaching Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies offers an introduction to the philosophy and practice of Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies and takes up several significant ongoing questions related to it. This volume emerges from sustained conversations about the pedagogy of Undergraduate Research by a group of teacher-scholars in the discipline, and it seeks to extend those conversations. For those new to Undergraduate Research, this book provides an overview of fundamental issues and pedagogical questions and practical models for application in the classroom. For seasoned mentors, it acts as a dialogue partner on emerging issues and offers insight into pertinent questions in the field based on the experience of recognized experts.

Books by Monique Moultrie

In Passionate and Pious, Monique Moultrie explores the impact of faith-based sexual ministries on black women’s sexual agency to trace how these women navigate sexuality, religious authority, and their spiritual walk with God. Providing churchwomen a space to candidly discuss these issues, these popular ministries exist largely beyond the traditional church, with dialogues about sex taking place in chat rooms and through text messages, social media, email, and other media. Advancing a womanist sexual ethics, Moultrie reframes biblical interpretations and conceptions of what constitutes a healthy relationship to provide a basis for sexual decision making that does not privilege monogamy or deny female pleasure, thereby calling on black churchwomen to experience responsible and life-enhancing sex.

Significantly updated and expanded, A Guide for Women in Religion offers students and scholars alike real advice in navigating the ever-changing academic landscape. Offering practical guidance on graduate school, dissertation-writing, job interviews, promotions, retirement, publications, conferences, and so much more, this is the essential resource.

By Zahra Ayubi & By Michal Raucher

Developing a lens for a feminist philosophy of Islam, Ayubi analyzes constructions of masculinity, femininity, and gender relations in classic works of philosophical ethics. In close readings of foundational texts by Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali, Nasir-ad Din Tusi, and Jalal ad-Din Davani, she interrogates how these thinkers conceive of the ethical human being as an elite male within a hierarchical cosmology built on the exclusion of women and nonelites. Gendered Morality offers a vital and disruptive new perspective on patriarchal Islamic ethics and metaphysics, showing the ways in which the philosophical tradition can support the aims of gender justice and human flourishing.

Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority among Haredi Women explores the ways Haredi Jewish women make decisions about their reproductive lives. Although they must contend with interference from doctors, rabbis, and the Israeli government, Haredi women find space for―and insist on―autonomy from them when they make decisions regarding the use of contraceptives, prenatal testing, fetal ultrasounds, and other reproductive practices. Drawing on their experiences of pregnancy, knowledge of cultural norms of reproduction, and theological beliefs, Raucher shows that Haredi women assert that they are in the best position to make decisions about reproduction.

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