Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements stages a critical engagement between religious texts and the problem of sexual violence. Rape and other forms of sexual violence are widespread on college and university campuses; they also occur in sacred texts and religious traditions. The volume addresses these difficult intersections as they play out in texts, traditions, and university contexts. The volume gathers contributions from religious studies scholars to engage these questions from a variety of institutional contexts and to offer a constructive assessment of religious texts and traditions.
Rhiannon Graybill is W.J. Millard professor of religion and associate professor of religious studies at Rhodes College. Beatrice Lawrence is associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Seattle University. Meredith Minister is assistant professor of religion at Shenandoah University.
Introduction: Engaging Rape Culture, Reimagining Religious Studies Rhiannon Graybill, Meredith Minister, and Beatrice Lawrence 1. Reading Biblical Rape Texts beyond a Cop-Out Hermeneutics in the Trump Era Susanne Scholz 2. Constructions of Hindu Mythology after the Rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey: Coupling Activism with Pedagogy T. Nicole Goulet 3. Teaching Rape, Slavery, and Genocide in Bible and Culture Gwynn Kessler 4. On #MosqueMeToo: Lessons for Nuancing and Better Implementing the Lessons of #MeToo Kirsten Boles 5. Judges 19 and Non-Con: Sado-Kantian Aesthetics of Violence in the Tale of an Unnamed Woman Minenhle Nomalungelo Khumalo 6. To Confess the Fundamental Marian Dogma: Postulating the Doctrine of Mary's Reproductive Justice Jeremy Posadas 7. Rape Culture in the Rabbinic Construction of Gender Beatrice Lawrence 8. Sex and Alien Encounter: Rethinking Consent as a Rape Prevention Strategy Meredith Minister 9. Good Intentions are Not Enough Rhiannon Graybill
Framed by the current #MeToo movement, Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements seeks to start conversations within religious studies about "sexual violence, especially sexual violence on college and university campuses" (2). Whether or not the authors explicitly frame their discussion around classroom contexts, they all provide valuable food for thought about engaging students in meaningful conversations about sexual violence, rape culture, and religion in both their studies and their everyday lives. * Reading Religion * This volume offers crucial intersectional analyses of sexual violence and rape culture from the disciplinary space of religious studies. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to engage in critically-informed conversations on sexual violence in college classrooms. -- Nami Kim, Spelman College
