Gender and Literature in
Cross-Cultural Contexts
Workshop Three:
Gender, Myth, and Spirituality
2-4 April 2003
Pearson 305, UCL
Project Leaders: Dr Nana Wilson-Tagoe (SOAS) Prof Michael Worton (UCL)
Research Assistant: Dr Ross Forman
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
GENERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT GENDER, MYTH, AND SPIRITUALITY
 To what extent does the history of religion and/or spirituality determine the ways in
which we conceive of belief systems in contemporary societies?
 How can one usefully distinguish between religion and spirituality? Is this simply a
difference between organised belief systems and individual beliefs – or is the difference
more complex?
 How does gendering form hierarchical structures in different religions – and between
different denominations of the same religion?
 Can godheads be re-gendered? If so, how can this be effected?
 How do different belief systems negotiate the relationship between gender and prayer?
 What is meant by a ‘feminist theology’ or a ‘feminist spirituality’?
 Why do religions tend to be homophobic, even when the divinities are homosexual or
transsexual or polysexual?
 Why is mysticism traditionally regarded as an essentially feminine approach to belief?
 How have Western religions influenced gender norms in different geographical
regions?
 How have different local contexts transformed Western religions?
 How do ideas about gender and religion intersect with ideas about atheism or
secularisation?
 Can indigenous Asian and African religions help us to rethink our understanding of
gender in ‘Western’ contexts?
 Are there ways in which ecumenical thinking and gender studies can be made to work
together?
QUESTIONS ABOUT GENDER, MYTH, AND SPIRITUALITY AND LITERATURE AND
GENDER STUDIES
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How is spirituality represented in literature?
What are the implications for gender studies of growing fundamentalism in many of
the world’s major religions?
To what extent can the reading of non – canonical religious texts (e.g. the Apocrypha)
influence our understanding of the relationship between gender and spirituality?
How are interpretations of religious texts mediated by gender politics?
Why and in what ways have representations of motherhood become central to
religious beliefs or practices?
How are prophecy and insight represented as gendered in literature?
What role do creation myths play in literature? How are they (or aren’t they)
gendered?
Do religious performances and ceremonies constitute literary texts? In what ways?
Are these gendered?
How have religion and spirituality served as a focal point for literary genres—such as
theatre, which in many cultures is performed in religious settings?
What is the relationship between religion and spirituality, gender, and oral culture?
Wednesday, 2 April
1.30-2.00
Registration and Tea/Coffee
2.0-2.30
Michael Worton (French, UCL)
Opening Remarks
2.30-4.0
Chair: Wen-Chin Ouyang (Near and Middle East, SOAS)
Gabriele Griffin (Gender Studies, Hull)
Spirituality in the Diasporic Imaginary of Contemporary Black and
Asian Women Playwrights in Britain
Jane Clifford (Religions, SOAS)
Re-forming Gender in West African Pentecostal Marriage Literature
4.00-4.30
Break
4.30-5.15
Chair: Faisal Devji (Ismaili Institute)
Farouk Topan (Africa, SOAS)
Gender, Goodness and God: Negotiating Spirituality in Swahili Literature
5.30
Chair: Michael Worton (French, UCL)
Public Lecture: Michael Arditti (Cruciform Lecture Theatre 2, UCL)
A Literary Passion: Michael Arditti reads from and discusses the reactions to his
controversial novel, Easter?
6.30
Reception (Portico)
8.00
Conference Dinner (£5 contribution for all participants).
Thursday, 3 April
9.0-9.30
Tea/Coffee
9.30-11.00
Chair: Rachel Harrison (South East Asia, SOAS)
Ada Rapoport-Albert (Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL)
Gendered Asceticism and Its Implications for the Jewish Mystical Tradition
Kelly Pemberton (Women’s Studies in Religion, Harvard Divinity School)
Reformist Sufis on Women and Spiritual Authority in the Second Age of Ignorance
11-11.30
Break
11.30-1
Chair: David Hughes (Music, SOAS)
June Boyce-Tillman (Applied Music, King Alfred’s)
Singing the Icon: The Effect of the Gendered Metanarratives of Christianity
on Women's Participation in Liturgical Music
Wendy Dunleavy (Music, SOAS)
The Female Sufi Singers of Egypt: Gender and Popular Religion in Contemporary
Egyptian Society
1-2
Lunch (Old Refectory)
2-3.30
Chair: James Agar (French, UCL)
Keller Kimbrough (Colby College/Sainsbury Institute for the Study of
Japanese Art and Culture, SOAS)
Incest and Enlightenment: The Poet Izumi Shikibu in a Sixteenth-century Japanese
Buddhist Tale
René Weis (English, UCL)
Medieval Heresy and Hippie Sex
3.30-3.45
Break
3.45-5.15
Chair: Margaret Healy (English, Sussex)
Austin Bukenya (Literature, Makerere, Uganda)
Inverting the Charter: Gendered Readings of the Ganda Kintu Myth of Origin
Deborah F. Sawyer (Religious Studies, Lancaster)
‘In the Image of God He Created Him; Male and Female He Created Them'
(Genesis 2.27): Conventional and Unconventional Gendering in Biblical Literature
5.30
Chair: Nana Wilson-Tagoe (Africa, SOAS)
Public Lecture: Buchi Emecheta (Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, SOAS)
Women’s Spirituality in Nigeria
[This event is co-sponsored by the Centre of African Studies, University of
London.]
6.30
Reception
Friday, 4 April
9-9.30
Tea/Coffee
9.30-11
Chair: Ayman El-Desouky (Near and Middle East, SOAS)
Susan Andrade (English, Pittsburgh)
Inside/Out, or the Public and the Private in Djebar's L'amour, la fantasia
and Ombre sultane
Peter Swaab (English, UCL)
‘Perverse Fancy’ in the South Seas: Sylvia Townsend Warner
and Mr Fortune’s Maggot
11-11.30
Break
11.30-1
Chair: Amina Yaqin (South Asia, SOAS)
Elleke Boehmer (Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Nottingham Trent)
The Conversion of Sexuality in Sister Nivedita's Kali Worship
Anne Hartman (English, Goldsmiths)
Confession as Cultural Form: Priscilla Lydia Sellon
and the Plymouth Inquiry
1-2
2-3.30
Lunch (Old Refectory)
Chair: Michael Worton (French, UCL)
Gill Rye (Institute of Romance Studies)
The Sacred without Sacrifice: Julia Kristeva's New Model
of Motherhood– An Exploration
Sian Hawthorne (Religions, SOAS)
Theorising Myth, Mythologising Theory: Authority, Gender and Mythmaking
3.30-5.0
Roundtable Discussion and Reception
5.00
Nana Wilson-Tagoe (Africa, SOAS)
Closing Remarks