Sex, Gender and the Sacred

Notes on Contributors vii

Introduction: Beyond the ?Religious Turn?? Past, Present and Future Perspectives in Gender History 1
JOANNA DE GROOT AND SUE MORGAN

Part I: Crossing Cultures and Transnational Exchanges

1 Witches, Female Priests and Sacred Manoeuvres: (De)Stabilising Gender and Sexuality in a Cuban Religion of African Origin 31
CAROLYN E. WATSON

2 Liberal Religion and the ?Woman Question? between East and West: Perspectives from a Nineteenth-Century Bengali Women?s Journal 51
CLARE MIDGLEY

3 Indeterminacy in Meaning: Religious Syncretism and Dynastic Historiography in the Shann¨uren zhuan 67
YUET KEUNG LO

4 ?All of Their Customs are Daughters of Their Religion?: Baptists in Post-Revolutionary Mexico, 1920s?present 83
KATHLEEN M. McINTYRE

5 Creating the ?Problem Hindu?: Sati, Thuggee and Female Infanticide in India, 1800?60 104
DANIEL J. R. GREY

Part II: Religion, Embodiment and Subjectivity

6 Engendering Purity and Impurity in Assyriological Studies: A Historiographical Overview 119
´ERICA COUTO-FERREIRA AND AGN`ES GARCIA-VENTURA

7 Lamentation Motifs in Medieval Hagiography 135
ANNE E. BAILEY

8 Architecture of Desire: Mediating the Female Gaze in the Medieval English Anchorhold 150
MICHELLE M. SAUER

9 The Alluring Beauty of a Leonardesque Ideal: Masculinity and Spirituality in Renaissance Milan 170
MAYA CORRY

10 ?Deaf to the Word?: Gender, Deafness and Protestantism in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland 195
ESME CLEALL

Part III: Religion, Gender and Sexuality

11 The Sexual Shame of the Chaste: ?Abortion Miracles? in Early Medieval Saints? Lives 211
ZUBIN MISTRY

12 ?Give Me Chastity?: Masculinity and Attitudes to Chastity and Celibacy in the Middle Ages 225
PAT CULLUM

13 Common Soldiers, Same-Sex Love and Religion in the Early Eighteenth-Century British Army 241
SUSAN GANE

14 ?Dark Ecstasies?: Sex, Mysticism and Psychology in Early Twentieth-Century England 256
JOY DIXON

15 Made Flesh? Gender and Doctrine in Religious Violence in Twentieth-Century Spain 272
MARY VINCENT

Part IV: Gender, Religion and Political Activity

16 Conversion Trouble: The Alawis of Hadhramawt, Empire, Gender and the Problem of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century South India 287
WILSON CHACKO JACOB

17 ?Fatherland, Religion, Family?: Exploring the History of a Slogan in Greece, 1880?1930 304
EFFI GAZI

18 The More Things Change: Debating Gender and Religion in India?s Hindu Laws, 1920?2006 315
RINA VERMA WILLIAMS

Index 329