FGSS 6290 - [The Sexual Politics of Religion]

(crosslisted)
(also ANTHR 7490)

4 credits. Letter grades only.

Next offered 2015-2016. Co-meets with ANTHR 4490/FGSS 4290/RELST 4240.

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.