History 492B

GENDER AND RELIGION:  THE CASE OF CHRISTIANITY

History 492B                                                                  Megan McLaughlin

Spring, 1999                                                                  E-mail:  megmclau@uiuc.edu

REQUIREMENTS

Leading Two Class Discussions (20% of course grade)

Presenting Two In-Class Reports (20%)

Three Comparative Essays (20%, 20%, 20%)

Week 1 (Jan. 19)--Introductory

Part I.  Gender and Religious Symbols

Week 2 (Jan. 26):  God as Father/Jesus as Mother

Required Readings:

Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God:  Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (San Francisco, 1990), pp. 80-114.

Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York, 1979), Intro. and pp. 57-83

Caroline Walker Bynum, “‘ . . . And Woman His Humanity’:  Female Imagery in the Religious Writing of the Later Middle Ages, “ in Caroline Walker Bynum, Steven Harrell and Paula Richman, eds., Gender and Religion:  On the Complexity of Symbols (Boston, 1986), pp. 257-88.

Megan McLaughlin, “Gender Paradox and the Otherness of God,” Gender & History 3 (1991):  147-59

Reports:

Caroline Walker Bynum, “Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother:  Some Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing,” in Jesus as Mother:  Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982),  pp. 110-69

Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom:  St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 1-88

Week 3 (Feb. 2):  Neither Male nor Female?

Required Readings:

Daniel Boyarin, “Gender,” in Mark C. Taylor, ed., Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago, 1998), pp. 117-35.

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her:  A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York, 1983), pp. 205-41.

Rosemary Ruether, Women and Redemption:  A Theological History (Minneapolis, 1998), pp. 1-77

Reports:

Verna F. Harrison, “Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 41 (1990):  441-71.

Gibson, Joan.  “Could Christ Have Been Born a Woman?  A Medieval Debate.”  Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 8 (1992):  65-82.

Week 4 (Feb. 9):  Gender and Sanctity

Required Readings:

Introduction and article by Giselle de Nie, in Anneke Mulder-Bakker, ed., Sanctity and Motherhood:  Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages (New York, 1995), pp. 2-30, 100-61

John Coakley, “Friars, Sanctity, and Gender:  Mendicant encounters with Saints, 1250-1325,” in Clare Lees, ed., Medieval Masculinities:  Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 1994), pp. 91-110

Reports:

Karras, Ruth.  “Holy Harlots:  Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend.”  Journal of the History of Sexuality 1 (1990):  3-32.

Vern Bullough, “Cross Dressing and Gender Role Change in the Middle Ages,” in vern Bullough and James Brundage, eds., Handbook of Medieval Sexuality (New York, 1996), pp. 223-42

Benjamin Semple, “The Male Psyche and the Female Sacred Body in Marie de France and Christine de Pizan,” Yale French Studies 86 (1994):  164-86.

Week 5 (Feb. 16):  Gender and the Demonic

Required Readings:

Bernard Prusak, “Woman:  Seductive Siren and Source of Sin?” in Rosemary Ruether, ed., Religion and Sexism (New York, 1974), pp. 89-116.

R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago, 1991), pp. 65-91

Newman, Barbara.  “Possessed by the Spirit:  Devout Women, Demoniacs, and the Apostolic Life in the Thirteenth Century.”  Speculum 73 (1998):  733-70.

Reports:

Ruth Padel, “Women:  Model for Possession by Greek Daemons,” in Averil Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt, eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (Detroit, 1983), pp. 3-19.

Anita Lundy, “Carnality and Witchcraft:  The Salaciousness of Women as a Foundation for the ‘Malleus maleficarum’, “ Magistra:  A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History 2 (1996):  63-87.

Part II.  Gender and Religious Institutions

Week 6 (Feb. 23):  Mission

Kate Cooper, “Insinuations of Womanly Influence:  An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy,” Journal of Roman Studies 72 (1992):  150-64

Alcuin Blamires, “Women and Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Saints’ Lives,” Viator 26 (1995):  135-52.

Articles by Nicole Bériou, Carolyn Muessig, and Roberto Rusconi in Beverly Kienzle and Pamela Walker, eds., Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 134-58, 173-95

Reports:

Anne Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters (Louisville, KY, 1996), pp.  1-80

Sharon Farmer, “Persuasive Voices:  Clerical Images of Medieval Wives,” Speculum 61 (1986):  517-43.

FIRST ESSAY DUE

Week7 (March 2):  Priesthood

Required Readings:

Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests:  Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco, 1993), pp. 9-50, 155-76

Jo Ann McNamara, “The Herrenfrage:  The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050-1150,” in Clare A Lees, ed., Medieval Masculinities:  Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 1994), pp. 3-30.

Martin, John Hilary.  “The Injustice of Not Ordaining Women:  A Problem for Medieval Theologians.”  Theological Studies 48 (1987):  303-16.

Reports:

Clark, Elizabeth.  “Patrons, Not Priests:  Gender and Power in Late Ancient Christianity.”  Gender & History 2 (1990):  252-64.

Methuen, Charlotte.  “Widows, Bishops and the Struggle for Authority in the Didascalia Apostolorum.”  Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995):

197-213.

Barbara Newman, “WomanSpirit, Woman Pope,” in her From Virile Woman to WomanChrist:  Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 182-223

Week 8 (March 9):  Monasticism

Required Reading:

Penelope Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession:  Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago, 1991)

Reports:

Fisher, A.L.  “Women and Gender in Palladius’ Lausiac History.”  Studia Monastica 33 (1991):  23-50.

Jo Ann McNamara, Sisters in Arms:  Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA, 1996), pp. 61-88

Henderson, J. Frank.  “Feminizing the Rule of Benedict in Medieval England.”  Magistra:  A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History 1 (1995):  9-38.

SPRING BREAK

Week 9 (March 23):  Prophecy

Required Readings:

Max Weber, Economy and Society (1925), Ch. 6:  Religious Groups (The Sociology of Religion), pp. 399-500

Articles by Karen King and Karen Jo Torjesen in Beverly Kienzle and Pamela Walker, eds., Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 21-41 and 42-56

Reports:

Antoinette Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets:  A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric (Minneapolis, 1990), pp.

Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Mysticism and Asceticism of Medieval Women:  Some Comments on the Typologies of Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch,” in her Fragmentation and Redemption:  Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1992),  pp. 53-78

Week 10 (March 30):  Religious Conflict 1--Heresy

Required Readings:

Rose Lockwood,  “Potens et Factiosa Femina:  Women, Martyrs and Schism in Roman North Africa,” Augustinian Studies 30 (1989):  165-82

Paul McKechnie, “‘Women’s Religion’ and Second-Century Christianity,”  Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47 (1996):  409-31

Articles by Beverly Kienzle and Anne Brenon in Beverly Kienzle and Pamela Walker, eds., Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity  (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 99-113 and 114-33

Reports:

Richard Abels and Ellen Harrison, “The Participation of Women in Languedocian Catharism,” Mediaeval Studies 41 (1979):  215-51

Shannon McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy:  Women, Men, and Lollard Communities, 1420-1530 (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 137-49

Week 11 (April 6):  Religious Conflict 2--Other Religions

Required Readings:

Steven Kruger, “Becoming Christian, Becoming Male?” in Jeffrey Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds.  Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York, 1997), pp. 21-42

David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence:  Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1996), pp. 127-65

Report:

Louise Mirrer, “Representing ‘Other’ Men:  Muslims, Jews, and Masculine Ideals in Medieval Castilian Epic and Ballad,” in Clare Lees, ed., Medieval Masculinities:  Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 1994), pp. 169-86

Part III.  Religion and Embodiment

Week 12 (April  13):  Heterosexuality

Required Reading:

Peter Brown,  The Body and Society:  Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), pp. 3-209, 341-447

Reports:

Dyan Elliott, “Sex in Holy Places:  An Exploration of a Medieval Anxiety,”  Journal of Women’s History 6 (1994):  6-34

Ruth Karras, Common Women:  Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (Oxford, 1996), pp. 102-30

SECOND ESSAY DUE

Week 13 (April 20 ):  Homosexuality

Required Reading:

Mark Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago, 1997)

Reports:

Bernadette Brooten, Love Between Women:  Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago, 1996), pp. 303-57

John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, 1980), pp. 269-334

Week 14 (April 27 ):  Food

Required Reading:

Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast:  The Religious Signfiicance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987)

 Reports:

Kathleen Biddick, “Genders, Bodies, Borders:  Technologies of the Visible,” Speculum 68 (1993):  389-418

Martha Reineke, “‘This is My Body’:  Reflections on Abjection, Anorexia, and Medieval Women Mystics,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58 (1990):  245-65

Ulrike Wiethaus, “Sexuality, Gender and the Body in Late Medieval Spirituality:  Cases from Germany and the Netherlands,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 (1991):  35-52

Week 15 (May 4):  Blood

Required Readings:

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger:  An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966), pp.

Leonie J. Archer, “‘In Thy Blood Live’:  Gender and Ritual in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition,” in Alison Joseph, ed., Through the Devil’s Gateway:  Women, Religion, and Taboo (London, 1990);  reprinted in David Hicks, ed., Ritual and Belief:  Readings in the Anthropology of Religion (Boston, 1999), pp. 376-91

Reports:

Charles T. Wood, “The Doctors’ Dilemma:  Sin, Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval Thought,”  Speculum 56 (1981):  710-27.

Martin Irvine, “Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body:  Castration, Identity and Remasculinization,” In Jeffrey Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds., Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York, 1997), pp. 87-106

THIRD ESSAY DUE BY MAY 14

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR JANUARY 26

Substantive:

How did it come about that the God of the Christians was imagined as male?  Why did that gendering of God persist in antiquity and the middle ages?  Did it differ in the two eras?

How central was it to the Christian conception of God in each period?

When and why was God sometimes imagined as female?

How did early and medieval Christians reconcile these different images of God?

Theoretical:

How does the gendered experience of women and men affect their construction and use of religious symbols?

How important is gender in the symbolic universe of religion?

GENDER AND RELIGION:  THE CASE OF CHRISTIANITY
RESERVE LIST

  1. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God:  Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (San Francisco, 1990)
  2. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York, 1979)
  3. Caroline Walker Bynum, Steven Harrell and Paula Richman, eds., Gender and Religion:  On the Complexity of Symbols (Boston, 1986)
  4. Megan McLaughlin, “Gender Paradox and the Otherness of God,” Gender & History 3 (1991):  147-59
  5. Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother:  Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982)
  6. Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom:  St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley, 1987)
  7. Mark C. Taylor, ed., Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago, 1998)
  8. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her:  A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York, 1983)
  9. Rosemary Ruether, Women and Redemption:  A Theological History (Minneapolis, 1998)
  10. Verna F. Harrison, “Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 41 (1990):  441-71
  11. Kari Børresen, Subordination and Equivalence:  The Nature and Role of Woman in Augustine and thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC, 1981)
  12. Gibson, Joan.  “Could Christ Have Been Born a Woman?  A Medieval Debate.”  Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 8 (1992):  65-82
  13. Anneke Mulder-Bakker, ed., Sanctity and Motherhood:  Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages (New York, 1995)
  14. Clare Lees, ed., Medieval Masculinities:  Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 1994)
  15. Karras, Ruth.  “Holy Harlots:  Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend.”  Journal of the History of Sexuality 1 (1990):  3-32
  16. Vern Bullough and James Brundage, eds., Handbook of Medieval Sexuality (New York, 1996)
  17. Benjamin Semple, “The Male Psyche and the Female Sacred Body in Marie de France and Christine de Pizan,” Yale French Studies 86 (1994):  164-86
  18. Rosemary Ruether, ed., Religion and Sexism (New York, 1974), pp. 89-116
  19. R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago, 1991)
  20. Newman, Barbara.  “Possessed by the Spirit:  Devout Women, Demoniacs, and the Apostolic Life in the Thirteenth Century.”  Speculum 73 (1998):  733-70
  21. Averil Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt, eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (Detroit, 1983)
  22. Anita Lundy, “Carnality and Witchcraft:  The Salaciousness of Women as a Foundation for the ‘Malleus maleficarum’, “ Magistra:  A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History 2 (1996):  63-87
  23. Kate Cooper, “Insinuations of Womanly Influence:  An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy,” Journal of Roman Studies 72 (1992):  150-64
  24. Alcuin Blamires, “Women and Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Saints’ Lives,” Viator 26 (1995):  135-52
  25. Beverly Kienzle and Pamela Walker, eds., Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley, 1998)
  26. Anne Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters (Louisville, KY, 1996)
  27. Sharon Farmer, “Persuasive Voices:  Clerical Images of Medieval Wives,” Speculum 61 (1986):  517-43
  28. Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests:  Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco, 1993)
  29. John Hilary Martin, “The Injustice of Not Ordaining Women:  A Problem for Medieval Theologians,”  Theological Studies 48 (1987):  303-16
  30. Elizabeth Clark,  “Patrons, Not Priests:  Gender and Power in Late Ancient Christianity,”  Gender & History 2 (1990):  252-64
  31. Charlotte Methuen, “Widows, Bishops and the Struggle for Authority in the Didascalia Apostolorum,”  Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995): 197-213
  32. Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist:  Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia, 1995)
  33. Penelope Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession:  Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago, 1991)
  34. A.L. Fisher, “Women and Gender in Palladius’ Lausiac History,”  Studia Monastica 33 (1991):  23-50
  35. Jo Ann McNamara, Sisters in Arms:  Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA, 1996)
  36. J. Frank Henderson,  “Feminizing the Rule of Benedict in Medieval England.”  Magistra:  A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History 1 (1995):  9-38
  37. Max Weber, Economy and Society (1925), Ch. 6:  Religious Groups (The Sociology of Religion)
  38. Antoinette Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets:  A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric (Minneapolis, 1990)
  39. Caroline Walker Bynum Fragmentation and Redemption:  Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1992)
  40. Rose Lockwood,  “Potens et Factiosa Femina:  Women, Martyrs and Schism in Roman North Africa,” Augustinian Studies 30 (1989):  165-82
  41. Paul McKechnie, “‘Women’s Religion’ and Second-Century Christianity,”  Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47 (1996):  409-31
  42. Richard Abels and Ellen Harrison, “The Participation of Women in Languedocian Catharism,” Mediaeval Studies 41 (1979):  215-51
  43. Shannon McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy:  Women, Men, and Lollard Communities, 1420-1530 (Philadelphia, 1995)
  44. Jeffrey Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds.  Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York, 1997)
  45. David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence:  Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1996)
  46. Peter Brown,  The Body and Society:  Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988)
  47. Dyan Elliott, “Sex in Holy Places:  An Exploration of a Medieval Anxiety,”  Journal of Women’s History 6 (1994):  6-34
  48. Ruth Karras, Common Women:  Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (Oxford, 1996)
  49. Mark Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago, 1997)
  50. Bernadette Brooten, Love Between Women:  Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago, 1996)
  51. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, 1980)
  52. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast:  The Religious Signfiicance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987)
  53. Kathleen Biddick, “Genders, Bodies, Borders:  Technologies of the Visible,” Speculum 68 (1993):  389-418
  54. Martha Reineke, “‘This is My Body’:  Reflections on Abjection, Anorexia, and Medieval Women Mystics,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58 (1990):  245-65
  55. Ulrike Wiethaus, “Sexuality, Gender and the Body in Late Medieval Spirituality:  Cases from Germany and the Netherlands,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 (1991):  35-52
  56. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger:  An Analysis fo the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966)
  57. David Hicks, ed., Ritual and Belief:  Readings in the Anthropology of Religion (Boston, 1999)
  58. Charles T. Wood, “The Doctors’ Dilemma:  Sin, Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval Thought,”  Speculum 56 (1981):  710-27.