Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible

Call For Papers: Our FIRST SESSION is jointly sponsored with the AAR's Feminist Theological Reflection section. This session is the inaugural session on Rape Culture, Religious Texts, and Pedagogy. Contemporary conversations about the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses has created the space for broader examination of "rape culture." Rape culture describes a socailly accepted pattern that legitimates violence as a form of gender policing and sexual violence as a form of policing other socially non-conforming activities. Religious texts play a significant role in the examination of rape culture: they contribute to the construction and transmission of cultural norms; they influence government and legal systems; they create gendered expectations and taboos; and they function both overtly and subtly in current media. The teaching of these texts provides us with the opportunity to examine rape culture and its effects on us and our students, and perhaps to work towards its deconstruction. We invite papers that explore the intersection of rape culture and religious texts, and the ways in which innovative pedagogies can promote deep, effective, and powerful examination of the texts themselves and the ways in which those texts play a role in and/or are reflected in cultural contructs. The SECOND SESSION is jointly sponosored with the Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity section unit. From the masculinizing of martyrs to the metaphoric rape of feminized nations in Roman art and biblical prophets, gender and violence often coalesce in ancient religion. This panel on Gender and Violence invites papers to investigate the intersection of these two themes in ancient religious artifacts (texual and material). The THIRD SESSION is an open session, welcoming proposals on any element of research related to gender, sexuality, and the body in the study of the bible and/or antiquity. Please email Gwynn Kessler at kessler@swarthmore.edu with questions.

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