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Gender Studies

Using religious imagery in popular culture to explore and challenge everyday sexism, sexual harassment and abuse together with secondary school students

by Katie Edwards on

Our White Rose Collaboration Fund project will begin soon and the webpage is already live!

Revelations of pervasive sexual harassment and abuse are emerging from numerous settings. Moreover, educational research shows that such is prevalent already among school pupils. Children as young as 7 experience sexualized name-calling, unwanted touching and appearance-related bullying. Teachers report witnessing such practices and feeling ill-equipped to respond (Women’s and Equalities Committee Report, 2016).

Our multi-disciplinary collaboration brings together academics from Education, English, Biblical and Religious Studies to explore sexism and sexual harassment in secondary school settings using one discrete focus and lens: the role of religious imagery in popular culture (particularly advertising and music videos).

Religious imagery (e.g. the veil, the Cross) is widely used in popular culture both to represent and reinforce ideologies about such complex concepts as ‘sexuality’, ‘purity’, ‘virginity’, or ‘im/morality’. This imagery also conveys notions that casualize or glamourize sexual harassment or violence, reinforce the normativity of heterosexuality, and perpetuate racist associations between Blackness and certain sexual characteristics/desires. Such representations can be regarded as problematic in relation to young people’s understandings of gender, sex and sexualities.

In consultation with secondary schools from all three White Rose regions and a third-sector organization offering gender equality training for school-age girls (Fearless Futures), the network will conduct three pilot workshops with secondary school students (girls and boys) to investigate interactions with religious imagery in popular culture and the ways in which these representations shape understandings of gender, sex and sexualities.

Professor Vanita Sundaram (University of York) will lead the project with Dr Johanna Stiebert (University of Leeds) and Dr Katie Edwards (University of Sheffield), working alongside colleagues Dr Valerie Hobbs (University of Sheffield), Dr Sarah Olive (University of York), Dr Jasjit Singh (University of Leeds), Dr Caroline Starkey (University of Leeds), Ms Sofia Rehman (University of Leeds) and Dr Meredith Warren (University of Sheffield).

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Special Lecture: Professor David Tombs and Dr Jayme Reaves ‘#MeToo Jesus’

by Katie Edwards on

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Book your place here.

In January 2018 Professor David Tombs will visit SIIBS and deliver a special Shiloh Project lecture on ‘#MeToo Jesus’ with Dr Jayme Reaves.

Professor Tombs is the Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues, at the University of Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand. He has a longstanding interest in contextual and liberation theologies and is author of Latin American Liberation Theologies (Brill, 2002). His current research focusses on religion violence and peace and especially on Christian responses to gender-based violence, sexual abuse and torture.

He is originally from the United Kingdom and previously worked at the University of Roehampton in London (1992-2001), and then in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin (2001-2014) on a conflict resolution and reconciliation programme. He has degrees in theology from Oxford (BA/MA, 1987), Union Theological Seminary New York (STM, 1988), and London (PhD 2004), and in philosophy (MA London, 1993).

 

Dr Jayme R. Reaves is a public theologian with 20 years experience working on the intersections between theology, peace, conflict, gender, and culture in the US, Former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, and Great Britain. Her book, Safeguarding the Stranger: An Abrahamic Theology and Ethic of Protective Hospitality is available from Wipf & Stock or any book retailer. You can find out more at www.jaymereaves.com.

Jayme’s social media links are:
Twitter: @jaymereaves
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JaymeRReaves

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#MeToo Jesus: Why Naming Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse Matters

2pm, 16 January, G.03 Jessop West, University of Sheffield

Jayme Reaves and David Tombs

Image: Michelangelo’s Santo Spirito Crucifix, Florence. Photo by Alexandra Korey.
© http://www.arttrav.com Used with kind permission.

The #MeToo hashtag and campaign created by Tarana Burke in 2007 and popularized by Alyssa Milano in October 2017 has confirmed what feminists have long argued on the prevalence of sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexually abusive behaviour. It has also prompted a more public debate on dynamics of victim blaming and victim shaming which contribute to the silences which typically benefit perpetrators and add a further burden to survivors. As such, the #MeToo movement raises important questions for Christian faith and theology. A church in New York offered a creative response in a sign which adapted Jesus’ words ‘You did this to me’ in Mt 25:40 to read ‘You did this to #MeToo’. This presentation will explore the biblical and theological reasons for naming Jesus as a victim of sexual abuse drawing on earlier work presenting crucifixion as a form of state terror and sexual abuse (Tombs 1999). It will then discuss some of the obstacles to this recognition and suggest why the acknowledgement nonetheless matters. It will argue that recognition of Jesus as victim of sexual abuse can help strengthen church responses to sexual abuses and challenge tendencies within the churches, as well as in wider society, to collude with victim blaming or shaming.

For further reading, see David Tombs, ‘Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse’ in Union Seminary Quarterly Review (1999).

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More Grant Success for The Shiloh Project

by Katie Edwards on

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The Shiloh project directors, Caroline Blyth (University of Auckland), Katie Edwards (University of Sheffield) and Johanna Stiebert (University of Leeds), are co-investigators of a successful Worldwide Universities Network research development grant with the University of Ghana.

Katie Edwards and Johanna Stiebert will visit the University of Ghana in 2018. Stay tuned for more updates on the project!

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16 Days of Activism – Day 16: Meredith Minister

by Meredith Minister on

Meredith Minister, Assistant Professor of Religion at Shenandoah University, talks to us on the final day of UN Women’s 16 Days of Activism campaign about her work on religion and sexual violence. Meredith works closely with fellow academic activists Rhiannon Graybill and Beatrice Lawrence. They have a forthcoming edited volume Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements (Lexington Books), which will be profiled on this blog in January.

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

I’m Meredith Minister, Assistant Professor of Religion at Shenandoah University. I also teach courses in the Gender and Women’s Studies program at Shenandoah.

What’s your involvement with gender activism? Does your work intersect with gender activism? How?

I am involved with gender activism in my scholarship, on campus, and in the community.

My recent scholarship has been focused on addressing sexual violence on college campuses by providing a better theoretical framework for prevention and response. This project has been ongoing for several years and has included presentations on trigger warnings and a critique of existing approaches to sexual violence including consent and bystander intervention. I also attended a NEH seminar this summer on diverse philosophical approaches to sexual violence led by Ann Cahill at Elon University. In my forthcoming book, I explore how rape culture is learned through cultural, religious, institutional, and legal processes and argue for deep and ongoing pedagogical interventions that offer possibilities for unlearning rape culture. This book is titled Rape Culture on Campus and is forthcoming from Lexington next year.

Beatrice and Rhiannon have been faithful conversation partners for this work and Rhiannon’s interview describes the ways we’ve collaborated so far and where you can find our work!

On campus, I have worked with students to promote better structures for preventing sexual violence and for responding to specific instances of sexual violence. I have also worked with faculty by developing and offering a workshop on teaching about sexual violence in partnership with our Title IX office here at Shenandoah.

Finally, off campus, I work with the Valley Equality Project, a community organization that serves the Winchester community by working to make our community safer for and more inclusive of LGBTQ+ persons.

How does or could The Shiloh Project relate to your work and activism?

 I think The Shiloh Project is doing really important work and I’ve enjoyed reading about the other scholars featured in this series. Scholarship is so often presented as an isolated endeavor but I think the kinds of academic work we’re doing, including challenging engrained cultural assumptions, really requires collective work and imagination. Not only can we learn from one another, but we also find validation and commiseration when things get messy (as they sometimes do when you come out against sexual violence).

How are you going to get active to resist gender-based violence and inequality?

 In my forthcoming book, I argue that the classroom can be a space where we can begin to unlearn engrained patterns of rape culture. This unlearning goes beyond simplistic interventions such as consent education and bystander intervention. These interventions depend on an understanding of human beings as autonomous individuals and fail to connect rape culture to other cultural assumptions such as white supremacy and institutions such as the prison industrial complex. Rather than creating responses to sexual violence that perpetuate these individualistic assumptions, I hope to draw on understandings of human beings as fragile and relational in order to rethink existing responses to sexual violence. I do this theoretical work in my scholarship in part because it energizes my resistance to gender-based violence on campus and in the community.

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16 Days of Activism – Day 16: Beatrice Lawrence

by Beatrice Lawrence on

To mark the final day of UN Women’s 16 Days of Activism campaign, we profile Beatrice Lawrence, an Assistant Professor at Seattle University. Beatrice works closely with fellow academic activists Rhiannon Graybill and Meredith Minister on religion and gender-based violence. Look out for their forthcoming edited volume Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements (Lexington Books).

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

I’m an assistant professor at Seattle University, where I teach courses on the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies, often cross-listed with Women and Gender Studies. I love my job; I think the material at the heart of my career is fascinating and important, and it’s wonderful to see students realize that as well. My research is eclectic, ranging from rabbinics to rape culture. A consistent thread, however, is that of pushing boundaries.

What’s your involvement with gender activism? Does your work intersect with gender activism? How?

 I grew up in a staunchly feminist household. My mother was an activist, going on marches and serving as the president of Idaho’s National Organization for Women. (Yes. Idaho.) She would take us with her, she would talk about it with us, and my father was just as engaged. Feminism was and is an integrated and central element of our family dialect, and I’m incredibly grateful: I have always been motivated to see and name gender-based injustice and violence. It is only natural that it would be a part of my work, and the way I parent my daughters.

I’ve always been involved in community and pedagogical work around sexual assault, by creating workshops, engaging in mindful teaching practices, and supporting activist groups. But a few years ago, I was blessed to meet my colleagues and friends, Rhiannon Graybill and Meredith Minister, at a Wabash workshop. We came to realize we shared a concern about sexual assault on college campuses, as well as the conviction that the culture surrounding it needed to be identified and named. Its intersection with our work in Bible and theology fueled our desire to create sophisticated yet accessible means to discuss it. Thus was born our work together, writing and teaching about rape culture.

How does or could The Shiloh Project relate to your work and activism?

 I’m grateful for the chance to connect with the wonderful people at The Shiloh Project to mutually promote each other’s work. We share a commitment to relevant, rigorous scholarship on gender-based inequality and violence, and a desire to have an impact in the academy as well as outside it. We are publishing a volume on rape culture and religious studies (due out late 2018), and look forward to sharing it in this context as well. The feminist ethic of collaboration and care is present in the work of The Shiloh Project: let’s work together, support each other, and make a difference.

How are you going to get active to resist gender-based violence and inequality?

I’m loud, angry, and active—and I plan to continue being thus.

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16 Days of Activism – Day 16: Rhiannon Graybill

by Rhiannon Graybill on

On the final day of UN Women’s 16 Days of Activism campaign, we profile Rhiannon Graybill, an Assistant Professor at Rhodes College, who works closely with fellow academic activists Beatrice Lawrence and Meredith Minister on gender-based violence. Look out for their forthcoming edited volume Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements (Lexington Books).

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

My name is Rhiannon Graybill and I’m an assistant professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. At Rhodes, I am also the director of the interdisciplinary Gender and Sexuality Studies program.

What’s your involvement with gender activism? Does your work intersect with gender activism? How?

I’m involved in gender activism in a number of ways. One of my major goals as director of Gender and Sexuality Studies is promoting scholarly work and campus awareness around gender. At Rhodes, I’ve organized events on feminism and surveillance, sexual violence on campus, and abortion activism, and I’m now working on a trans film festival event. The program also sponsors an undergraduate research symposium and a faculty scholarship group.

I’m also involved in gender activism in my research. My book, Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets is about masculinity, but to me this is always a feminist concern. Are We Not Men? uses feminist and queer theory to think about the male bodies of prophets and to understand the ways in which prophecy transforms masculinity and embodiment. My next book is a study of queer feminist readings of biblical women.

I also work specifically on sexual violence, especially in collaboration with Meredith and Beatrice. The three of us met at the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, when we were part of Teaching and Learning a Workshop for Pre-Tenure Religion Faculty. We not only got along really well, but we realized we were all deeply concerned about sexual violence on campus, and working to address it in different ways. We started collaborating, beginning with a workshop for our peers at the Wabash Center and coordinating some on-campus activities (I organized a workshop for my colleagues about teaching about rape in the Bible and classical literature). Then we put together a couple of publications, one for Teaching Theology and Religion and one for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. We also organized a panel at the AAR/SBL Annual meeting in 2016. Now we’re co-editing a volume entitled Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Perspectives with Lexington Books.

How does or could The Shiloh Project relate to your work and activism?

I’m so excited about The Shiloh Project! These issues are so important, and we need as many people working on them and talking about them as possible. It’s also really exciting to me to be able to be involved in international conversations around these issues, as I’m mostly familiar with the U.S. context. We have some peculiarities to our system, like the way that Title IX (the federal law about equal access in education that’s used to justify a lot of sexual violence policies) works. Thinking globally helps us gain perspective, as well as think about possible alternatives. I’m also really interested in The Shiloh Project’s work on popular culture, as well as spiritualism and transphobia. I can’t wait to see what you all produce!

How are you going to get active to resist gender-based violence and inequality?

 This is the time to do it! Things have seemed pretty terrible on a gender front in the U.S. lately, but in a funny way I’m heartened by the outpouring of sexual harassment and assault allegations in the media and politics. I think it’s possible this might lead to some change. At the very least, people in authority are beginning to hear what we’ve been saying for decades – longer than that! I also think popular culture provides an interesting, if complicated, feminist space. I’m going to keep studying and teaching about it; I think teaching students is one great avenue for feminist activism.

Follow the links to read more of Rhiannon’s work on sexual violence:

Sexual Violence in and around the Classroom (a piece the three of us wrote for Teaching Theology and Religion).

 

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16 Days of Activism – Day 15: Dawn Llewellyn

by Dawn Llewellyn on

On Day 15, the penultimate day of the 16 Days of Activism, we talk to Dawn Llewellyn, Senior Lecturer in Christian Studies at the University of Chester.

Tell us about yourself…who are you and what do you do?

I’m Dawn and I am Senior Lecturer in Christian Studies, in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Chester –  I’ve been here for 7 years since finishing my PhD in Religious Studies at Lancaster in 2010. I teach and supervise in the areas of gender and religion, sociology of religion, gender studies, and qualitative methodologies and methods. My work is grounded in feminist qualitative approaches to the study of gender and Christianity: I’ve researched women’s religious reading practices and cultures in relation to literature and the Bible; I’ve also written on feminist generations, third wave feminism, the wave metaphor, and the disciplinary disconnections between feminist/women’s/gender studies and religion.

I’m currently examining women’s reproductive agency in Christianity. In particular, my research focuses on women’s  narratives of choice toward motherhood or elective childlessness, and how women mediate and experience the pronatalism circulating through doctrine, scriptures, teachings and the everyday social practices of church life (no surprise, there’s *quite* a lot of pronatalism for women to mediate).

What’s your involvement with The Shiloh Project?

I was delighted and honoured to be asked to become a member when the Shiloh project began. It’s such an important conversation that Katie, Johanna, and Caroline and the team have brought to the fore because religious discourses do inscribe and re-inscribe the inequalities underlying gendered violence and rape culture.

At the moment, I’m very good at tweeting and retweeting about the Shiloh Project and SIIBS, and I have promised to write a piece for the blog! I’m really excited to be part of the work the Project is doing and will do.

How does The Shiloh Project relate to your work?

As a feminist researcher in religious studies, I try in my teaching and research to analyse the ways religion, particularly Christianity, generates gendered injustice, and in particular, how women  mediate and negotiate patriarchal and androcentric religious structures. In my previous project, I interviewed Christian and ‘post’ Christian women about the literatures that inspired and resourced their faith and spiritual identities. In the interviews, the women also discussed their biblical reading practices and disclosed their anger at the passages they understood to valorize violence against women.  For some participants, this meant they left Christianity or at least turned to women’s writing as a substitute for the Bible – unable to read texts or belong to a tradition that sacralizes narratives that demean women. For others, they resist and reject the text they found problematic. Interrogating how women engage with the biblical texts, and Christian teachings, doctrines and practices is central to my research and teaching.

 How do you think The Shiloh Project’s work on religion and rape culture can add to discussion about gender activism today? 

Rape culture and ideology can be insidious; that’s part of its power. One way to dismantle its power and the shame and guilt it perpetuates is to name it, as we saw with #MeToo. During that campaign, I was really struck, moved, and enraged by the shared stories of my friends and colleagues who had experienced harassment in academia: at conferences, in meetings, when travelling, and at University or departmental social events. It was also painful to see how many social media posts by women about #MeToo started with a line or two saying that they didn’t think what they’d experienced was ‘serious’ enough to warrant mentioning; and the media backlash against those testimonies reveals, again, the prominence of gendered violence and its acceptance.  In a secularizing society like the UK, in which religion has lost some of its influence for individuals, communities and institutions, it is too easy and simplex to think that religion no longer shapes cultural norms. The work that the Shiloh Project does – the blogs, the lectures, the projects, the seminars, the research – is important research that uncovers religion’s role in constructing and supporting rape culture.

What’s next for your work with The Shiloh Project?

The project’s themes and aims are helping me think more critically about motherhood and rape culture. Just as Christianity’s essentialist ideas about women’s bodies limit their roles to the maternal, essentialist ideas underpin sexual domination and violence. Generally, though, I’m looking forward to potential joint projects and questions that are already emerging, to being part of a such a fantastic initiative, and learning with and from such a fantastic bunch of scholars.

And I really need to write my blog piece…

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16 Days of Activism – Day 15: Jessica Keady

by Jessica Keady on

Tell us about yourself…who are you and what do you do?

I am Dr Jessica M. Keady and I am a Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David (Lampeter). I currently teach and supervise on topics related to the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism to both undergraduate and postgraduate students on a variety of degree programmes. I am also research active, and my main research interests are based on Second Temple Jewish texts and their ancient/social context. I am particularly interested in the portrayal of gender in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the constructions of Jewish purity and impurity laws. My first monograph, Vulnerability and Valour: A Gendered Analysis of Everyday Life in the Dead Sea Scrrolls has recently been published (Library of Second Temple Studies 91, Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017) used theories from Gender Studies to investigate the purity texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
What’s your involvement with The Shiloh Project?

I take an active interest in the promotion of The Shiloh Project’s significant work on Social Media. I have recently contributed to The Shiloh Project Blog – Rape Culture Discourse and Female Impurity: Genesis 34 as a Case Study and I am following the work that the project is undertaking and thinking of future collaborative plans between Sheffield, Leeds and Lampeter to foster further interdisciplinary dialogue amongst wonderful colleagues and friends.

How does The Shiloh Project relate to your research and teaching?

The Shiloh Project is important to my research as it enables me to question and interpret difficult biblical texts in a safe environment. A larger version of the blog post is being published in the forthcoming volume, Rape Culture, Gender Violence and Religion (ed. Caroline Blyth, Emily Colgan and Katie Edwards).
As a new lecturer, I am also preparing material for forthcoming modules that I will be teaching next academic year on Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World and I can envisage The Shiloh Project as being an excellent online resource for students to reflect on and use in their wider reading and understanding.

How do you think The Shiloh Project’s work on religion and rape culture can add to discussion about gender activism today? 

The increase in reports of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation, press coverage, and social media campaigns need to be encased in a wider rape culture framework, that primarily considers the survivors’ perspectives, and also monitors the comments and possible backlash that he/she experiences from the general public. The Shiloh Project’s work is, arguably, needed now more than ever to demonstrate the importance of researching the phenomenon of rape culture, throughout history and within contemporary society.

What’s next for your work with The Shiloh Project?

Now that I have secured my first lectureship, I am keen on fostering future collaborations between the UWTSD and The Shiloh Project, especially in relation to the teaching of sexually violent biblical texts. I am also working with two of the Project Directors, Dr Katie Edwards and Dr Johanna Stiebert (and Dr Meredith Warren), on a future journal article series that is focused on Gender and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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16 Days of Activism – Day 14: Vanita Sundaram

by Vanita Sundaram on

Vanita Sundaram, Professor of Education at the University of York talks to us about her work on sexual violence in educational contexts.

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?

My name is Vanita Sundaram and I am a Professor of Education at the University of York, working on gender-related harassment and violence across the education lifecourse.

What’s your involvement with gender activism? Does your work intersect with gender activism? How?

 My work is increasingly applied in its focus, as I seek to use the fundamental and theoretical knowledge we have about gender-related harassment and violence among children, young people and young adults, to inform prevention and intervention work in educational settings. I have used my work to develop critical consciousness-raising clubs about gendered and sexual pressures facing young people in secondary school, as well as working with local survivor organisations to develop educational programmes about sexual violence for university settings. I am interested not only in the causes of gender-related harassment and violence and the multiple ways in which children and young people encounter such practices, but in working with children and young people themselves to develop educational interventions which can challenge the values, attitudes and cultures which allow such behaviours to flourish in educational settings. Part of this endeavour involves engaging young people with gender activism, with making visible the gender and sexual norms that govern and shape their identities, expectations and practices in and outside of school.

How does or could The Shiloh Project relate to your work and activism?

I am hugely excited to be involved with the Shiloh Project. The focus on rape culture in/and religious imagery, and the myriad of ways in which this is produced and sustained through popular culture is immediately relevant to my own work on young people’s experiences of gender-related violence. Popular culture is one of many interfaces through which young people’s understandings and expectations of gender and sexuality is negotiated, including in relation to representations of harassment and violence. Together with the Directors of the Shiloh Project, we are developing work on young people’s interactions with representations of violence in religious imagery used in popular culture. I am particularly excited by the intersectional approach we will take in understanding how particular notions of gender, race/ethnicity, class, and sexuality are produced through religious imagery in popular culture. This also links to current research I am doing on developing an intersectional approach to violence prevention with Professor Alison Phipps (Sussex) and Dr Tiffany Page (Cambridge).

How are you going to get active to resist gender-based violence and inequality?

 My research is directly related to challenging gender-related violence, through fundamental research on young people’s experiences and understandings of violence, as well as through applied research on prevention and intervention initiatives. I am keen to develop this applied focus, as it crosses over with activist work in school settings.

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