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Or at least trying to… Here’s a list of the books on my exam lists just in case anyone is curious about what I’m reading. Or if not, it will at least function as an excuse for any anti-social behavior I may exhibit between now and March. I’ve marked with an asterisk ones that I do not own in case anyone wants to lend them to me, though the library has been working passing well as long as I play the recall game.

Religious Studies Methods
Classical Methods and Critical Questions

*Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion.
Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy
*Durkheim, Emile. Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Doniger. The Implied Spider
*Eliade. Patterns in Comparative Religion
*Fitzgerald, Timothy. The Ideology of Religious Studies
Geertz.. The Interpretation of Cultures
Levi-Strauss, Claude. “The Structural Study of Myth”
*Malinowski. Magic, Science and Religion
Masuzawa, Tomuko. The Invention of World Religions.
*Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
*Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process
*Orsi. Between Heaven and Earth.
Patton. A Magic Still Dwells.
Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion.
*Smith, W.C. The Meaning and End of Religion

Methods and Theories of Practices (Ethnography, Ritual, Performance)

Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Can there be a feminist ethnography?”
*—. Writing Women’s Worlds
*De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life.
*Clifford, James and George Marcus. Writing Cultures
Bauman, Richard. “Performance” in Folkore, Cultural Peformances and Popular
Entertainments
Tambiah, Stanley “A Performative approach to Ritual” in Culture, Thought, and Social
Action: An anthropological approach
*Bell, Catherine. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions
–“Performance” in Critical Terms for the Study of Religion
*Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice.
*Briggs, Charles. Competence in performance: the creativity of tradition in Mexicano verbal art.

Religious Reading

Boyarin, Jonathan Ed. The Ethnography of Reading
*Griffiths, Paul G. Religious Reading
*Malley, Brian. How the Bible Works: An Anthropological Study of Evangelical Biblicism
*Neal, Lynn S. Romancing God
*Wimbush, Vincent. Ed. Theorizing Scriptures
*Van Doorn-Harder, Pieternella. Women Shaping Islam: Reading the Qu’ran in Indonesia

Literary Theory/ Philosophical Hermeneutics

Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics, Book VI
Adorno. Aesthetic Theory
Augustine. On Christian Doctrine
Austin, J.L. How to do things with words
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics
—.“Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel” & “Discourse in the Novel” Dialogic
Imagination
*Benjamin, Walter. The Task of the Translator.
Derrida, Jacques. Limited Inc
—. On Grammatology
Felman, Shoshana. Scandal of the Speaking Subject
*Foucault, order of things
Gadamer. Truth and Method
*Heidegger. Being and Time
Kant. The Critique of Judgment
*Merleau-Ponty. The Phenomenology of Perception
Ricoeur. The Rule of Metaphor
*—. From Text to Action
*—. Oneself as Another
*—. “Preface to Bultmann” in Conflict of Interpretations
*Schleiermacher. Hermeneutics and Criticism
Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations
—. On Certainty
*Dilthey (Still Not Sure how to select which from him)

Gender in U.S. Religion (20th Century)
In this list, I have drawn together works that represent mostly ethnographic approaches to women’s religious identity in the U.S, centering in Protestant Christianity and including a category of works that engage relevant issues in Catholic Christianity and other religions. The question that drives my selections centers on how conceptions and constructions of gender are central to the construction of religious identity and vice versa, especially concerning the differences between ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ forms of Protestantism. Another axis of questioning, which runs through all of the works but is more explicit in the works on the African-American community, is the question of ‘agency’ and whether or not religious tradition empowers or hinders women’s activism. This question of agency connects to issues I’m exploring in other exams around the conception of the autonomous self.

Conservative Protestant Christianity
*Bartkowski, John P. Remaking the Godly marriage: gender negotiation in evangelical families. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
*Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts. Fundamentalism and gender, 1875 to the present.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
*Ingersoll, Julie. Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles. New York: New York University Press, 2003.
*Griffith, R. Marie. God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Mainline Protestant Christianity
*Chaves, Mark. Ordaining women: culture and conflict in religious organizations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Davie, Jody Shapiro. Women in the presence: constructing community and seeking spirituality in mainline Protestantism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
Lawless, Elaine J. Wholly Women, Holy Women: Sharing Ministries of Wholeness Through Life Stories and Reciprocal Ethnography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993

African-American Protestant Christianity
Frederick, Marla. Between Sundays: black women and everyday struggles of faith. Berkeley: University of Los Angeles Press, 2003.
*Riggs, Marcia. Awake, Arise & Act: A Womanist call for black liberation. Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1994.
*Townsend, Cheryl Gilkes. “If it wasn’t for the women”: black women’s experience and womanist culture in church and community. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001.
*Wiggins, Daphne. Righteous content: black women’s perspectives on church and faith. New York: New York University Press, 2004.

Other Traditions
Brown, Karen McCarthy. Mama Lola: a Vodou priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Davidman, Lynn. Tradition in a Rootless World: Women turn to Orthodox Judaism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Orsi, Robert A. Thank You St. Jude: women’s devotion to the patron saint of lost causes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
*Rouse, Carolyn Moxley. Engaged surrender: African-American women and Islam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Feminist/Womanist/Global Women’s Theologies (Alphabetically)
I am focusing in this list on how gender and social constructions of identity bring issues of epistemology and method to the fore in theology. In particular, the category of experience as a source for Christian theology highlights the how knowledge is shaped by social categories of gender, race and culture. At the same time, I am interested in the way in which theologies that deal with gender and race also wrestle with normative sources in the Christian tradition and how that wrestling highlights the question how authority is constructed in religious identity. These theologies wrestle with the authoritative tradition
both in terms of looking for liberative elements and rejecting destructive elements, showing how religious norms shape identity along with race and gender and culture.

*Cannon, Katie G. Katie’s canon: womanism and the soul of the black community. New York: Continuum, 1995.
*Fulkerson, Mary McClintock. Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.
*Gonzalez, Michelle. Afro-Cuban Theology: religion, race, culture and identity. Gainesville, Fl: University Press of Florida, 2006.
*Grant, Jacquelyn. White Women’s Christ, Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response. Atlanta Scholars Press, 1989.
Isasi-Diaz, Ada Maria. En la lucha-In the Struggle: elaborating a mujerista theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.
*Jones, Serene. Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.
Jones, Serene. “Women’s Experience Between a Rock and A Hard Place” in Horizons in Feminist Theology. eds. Rebecca Chopp and Sheila Davaney. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. pp. 33-53.
Kwok Pui-Lan. Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.
McFague, Sallie. Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1982.
Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. Daughters of Anowa: African women and patriarchy. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995.
Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology. Beacon Press, 1983.
Saiving, Valerie. “The Human Situation: A Feminine View” in Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow eds. Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979.
Stuart, Elizabeth. “Experience and Tradition: Just Good Friends” in Elisabeth Hartlieb and Charlotte Methuen eds. Sources and Resources of feminist theologies = Quellen feministischer Theologien = Sources et resources des théologies féministes. Pharos ; Mainz : Matthias-Grünewald, 1997.
*Stuart, Elizabeth. Just Good Friends: Towards a Lesbian and Gay Theology of Relationships (London: Mowbray 1995).
*Terrell, Joanne. Power in the Blood? The Cross in the African-American Experience. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998.
*Weems, Renita. Just a Sister Away : A womanist vision of women’s relationships in the Bible. San Diego, CA: LuraMedia, 1988.
*Welch, Sharon D. Communities of Resistance and Solidarity: A feminist theology of liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985.
Williams, Delores. Sisters in the Wilderness: the challenge of womanist God-talk. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993.

Feminist Theory
My selections in feminist theory are focused around questions of autonomy and heteronomy in the shaping of the self and in constructions of feminist epistemology. Even more specifically, I have selected standpoint epistemology and constructivist/performative conceptions of gendered subjectivity as loci in which I find questions around the traditional view of the autonomous self. These questions also touch on an axis of tension between the conceptions of the social and the individual, which is reflected in debates about autonomy in constructions of liberal society.

*Alcoff, Linda Martin. 2006. Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self, Studies in Feminist Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Benhabib, Seyla. “The Generalized and the Concrete Other”
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of identity, Thinking Gender. New York: Routledge.
—. “Besides Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy” in Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. 17-39.
—. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005.
—. “Violence, Mourning and Politics.” Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and
Violence. New York: Verso, 2004. 19-49.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought : Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
*Fineman, Martha. The Autonomy Myth.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1.
Harding, Sandra. “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology.” Feminist Epistemologies. Eds. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter. New York: Routledge, 1993. 49-82.
Harraway, Donna. “The Persistence of Vision.” Writing on the Body. Eds. Katie Conboy et al. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. 283-195.
Harstock, Nancy. “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism.” Discovering Reality. Eds. Sandra Harding and Merrell Hintikka. Dortrecht, the Netherlands: Reidel Publishing, 1983. 283-305.
*Irigaray, Luce. 1985. Speculum of the Other Woman. Gillian C. Gill, Trans. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
—. Sexes and Genealogies (selections)
*Kittay, Eva Feder. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency
*Le Doeuff, Michele. The Sex of Knowing
*Oliver, Kelly. Witnessing: Beyond Recognition.
Young, Iris Marion. “The Ideal of Impartiality and the Civic Public,” Chapter 4 in Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
*Zerilli, Linda. Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom.

20th Century American Protestantism
The organizing principle is around communities and interaction with culture as well as evangelicalism, mainline protestantism and general trends in American religion in the twentieth century. The questions that structured my selections and which are guiding my reading at least initially are questions around how we represent the ‘varieties’ within major religious trends and how we come up with the categories of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ to begin with. Focusing a bit more on ethnographic accounts of American religion along with some of the more generalized work allows me to focus on the interplay between the particular or idiosyncratic and general categories.

*Ammerman, Nancy. Bible Believers
*Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory.
Bellah, Robert. Et al. Habits of the Heart
*Hutchison, William R. The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.
*Hutchison, William r., ed. Introductory Essay in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
*Lincoln, C. Eric and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience.
*Marsden, George. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
*McDannell, Colleen. Material Christianity
*Miller, Donald. Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
*Nelson, Timothy J. Every Time I feel the spirit.
*Roof, Wade Clark. Spiritual Marketplace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
*Roof, Wade Clark. American Mainline Religion
*Smith, Christian. American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (1998).
*Smith, Christian. Divided by Faith.
*Warner, R. Stephen. New Wine in Old Wineskins
*Warner, R Stephen. “Place of Congregation in Contemporary Religions Configuration” in American Congregations
*Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II.
*Wuthnow, Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community
*and “I Come Away Stronger”; How Small Groups are Shaping American Religion

Christian Thought, Modernity and PostModernity
Modernity is sometimes characterized as being ushered in by the Enlightenment’s disavowal of the authority of revelation as a pathway to knowledge in favor of rational objectivity. The enlightenment placed a premium on the human potential to know without external help and revelation then becomes the knowledge that comes from outside rational thought. Western Christian theology has weaved in and out of the subsequent development of Western philosophy particularly around this question of what are valid claims to knowledge. This course will investigate this interaction through a few of the major figures in both Western theology and philosophy. Initially, the debate characterizes faith as opposed to reason, faith being allied with the irrational and reason with rationality. Within theology, the debate is often understood in terms of the different weight the sources of tradition, scripture, experience and reason have in Christian thought. Also the debate about theology’s relationship to culture becomes a way of understanding how the challenges of Enlightenment thought should be dealt with. In late modern and post-modern Christian thought, feminist and liberationist approaches question some of the presuppositions of Enlightenment thought and continue theology’s engagement with the evaluating what are valid claims to knowledge in secular and Christian terms. This course endeavors to give a broad (though not necessarily comprehensive) introduction to theological epistemology and to encourage students in evaluating claims to knowledge, in Christianity and without.

Kant. What is Enlightenment?
Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone
Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics?
*Hegel. Phenomenology of the Spirit (selections)
Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling
*Feuerbach. The Essence of Christianity
Marx. Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology, Part 1

Schleiermacher. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers
*Barth, Karl. Letter to the Romans
The Barmen Declaration
Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology: Vol 1
Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, Vol I Seeing the Form
Rahner, Karl. Foundations of Christian Faith, esp Intro, chaps 1,2,5
Second Vatican Council. “Dei Verbum”

Brunner. Revelation and Reason
H. Richard Niebuhr. Christ and Culture
*Farley, Edward. Ecclesial Reflection
Tracy, David. Analogical Imagination
*Browning, Don. Fundamental Practical Theology (selections)

*Cone, James. A Black Theology of Liberation (poss selections from God of the Oppressed)
*Johnson, Elizabeth A. She Who Is
Williams, Delores. Sisters in the Wilderness
Guterriez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation.
*Boff, Leonardo. Ecclesiogenesis: The Base Communities Reinvent the Church
Fulkerson, Mary McClintock. Places of Redemption: Theology for a Worldly Church

Secondary Works
Dulles, Avery. Models of Revelation
Avis, Paul ed. Divine Revelation

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