RELG 258: Gender and Power in Recent Jewish and Christian Thought (HC) Fall 2016

This is a pioneering work on what it means to “engender” Jewish tradition—how women’s full inclusion can and must transform our understanding and practice of Jewish law, prayer, and marriage. Adler’s writing is passionate, sharply intelligent and offers a serious study of traditional biblical and rabbinic texts. Engendering Judaism challenges both mainstream Judaism and feminist dogma and speaks across the movements as well as to Christian theologians and feminists.

Contesting the feminist critique of the dangers of Christianity's self-giving ethics, this book advances a contemporary feminist christology engaging the strength of self-giving power.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

"By the time Ruether finishes, systematic theology has undergone a radical critique from which it emerges transformed rather than simply modified or totally rejected. She has constructed a full-fledged feminist theology--the first within a Christian context." -The New York Times Book Review

A feminist critique of Judaism as a patriarchal tradition and an exploration of the increasing involvement of women in naming and shaping Jewish tradition.

In 'Breaking the Fine Rain of Death', Emilie Townes focuses on the health care issues affecting African Americans and does so from a womanist perspective by paying attention to race and class as well as gender. Townes describes the lamentable history of health care in African American communities and the disease that affect African Americans disproportionately -- diabetes, hypertension, low-birthrate babies, and drug-related illnesses--as well as cultural, genetic, and socio-economic factors that account for them. Townes then offers models of care that have worked in some African American communities and that need to be used on a broader scale. She explores healing models sensitive to class and cultural context, and provides practical recommendations relevant to the needs of the Black Church and the African American community.

This landmark work first published 20 years ago helped establish the field of African-American womanist theology and is widely regarded as a classic text. Drawing on the biblical figure of Hagar mother of Ishmael, cast into the desert by Abraham and Sarah, but protected by God Williams finds a proptype for the struggle of African-American women. African slave, homeless exile, surrogate mother, Hagar's story provides an image of survival and defiance appropriate to black women today. Exploring the themes implicit in Hagar's story poverty and slavery, ethnicity and sexual exploitation, exile and encounter with God Williams traces parallels in the history of African-American women from slavery to the present day. A new womanist theology emerges from this shared experience, from the interplay of oppressions on account of race, sex and class. Sisters in the Wilderness offers a telling critique of theologies that promote liberation but ignore women of color. This is a book that defined a new theological project and charted a path that others continue to explore.