FGSS 4290 - [The Sexual Politics of Religion]

(crosslisted)
(also ANTHR 4490, RELST 4240) (SBA-AS)

4 credits. Letter grades only.

Next offered 2015-2016. Not open to first-year students. Co-meets with ANTHR 7490/FGSS 6290.

L. Ramberg.

Drawing on feminist and queer theory and ethnographic studies of ritual and devotional practices around the world this course will consider the relationships among the social organization of sexuality, embodiment of gender, nationalisms and everyday forms of worship. In addition to investigating the norms of family, gender, sex and the nation embedded in dominant institutionalized forms of religion we will study such phenomena as ritual transgenderism, neo tantrism, theogamy (marriage to a deity), priestly celibacy and temple prostitution. The disciplinary and normalizing effects of religion as well as the possibilities of religiosity as a mode of social dissent will be explored through different ethnographic and fictional accounts of ritual and faithful practices in Africa, Asia and the Americas.