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Booking and CFP for Religion and Rape Culture Conference, 6th July 2018

by Katie Edwards on

Booking is now open for our Religion and Rape Culture Conference. Places are limited so book your ticket fast!

Please note that we have small travel bursaries to contribute to travel costs for UK students who wish to attend the conference. These bursaries will be awarded on a needs basis, and speakers/those with poster submissions will also be prioritised.

The deadline for submission of proposals for our Religion and Rape Culture Conference is fast approaching! Get your proposals in by 19th March 2018. See the CFP below for more details.

Email shiloh@sheffield.ac.uk for more information.

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Call for papers! Religion and Rape Culture Conference, 6th July 2018

by Emma Nagouse on

Religion and Rape Culture Conference

  • The University of Sheffield, 6th July 2018
  • We are thrilled to confirm that one of our key-note speakers will be Professor Cheryl Exum.

We are delighted to announce a one day interdisciplinary conference exploring and showcasing research into the phenomenon of rape culture, both throughout history and within contemporary societies across the globe. In particular, we aim to investigate the complex and at times contentious relationships that exist between rape culture and religion, considering the various ways religion can both participate in and contest rape culture discourses and practices.

We are also interested in the multiple social identities that invariably intersect with rape culture, including gender, disabilities, sexuality, race and class. The Shiloh Project specialises in the field of Biblical Studies, but we also strongly encourage proposals relating to rape culture alongside other religious traditions, and issues relating to rape culture more broadly.

This conference is open to researchers at any level of study, and from any discipline. We invite submissions of abstracts no more than 300 words long and a short bio no later than 19th March. Please indicate whether your submission is for a poster or a presentation. We particularly welcome abstracts on the following topics:

  • Gender violence and the Bible
  • Gender, class and rape culture
  • Visual representations of biblical gender violence
  • Representations of rape culture in the media and popular culture
  • Teaching traumatic texts
  • Methods of reading for resistance and/or liberation
  • Sexual violence in schools and Higher Education
  • Religion, rape culture and the gothic/horror genre
  • Spiritualities and transphobia
  • Familial relations and the Bible

For more information, or to submit an abstract, email shiloh@sheffield.ac.uk

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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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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: 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: Alison Joseph

by Alison Joseph on

For Day 14 of the 16 Days of Activism, we profile Alison Joseph, researcher in the Hebrew Bible.

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

I am Alison Joseph. I received my PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. I am currently the assistant managing editor of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization. I write about the Hebrew Bible, specifically about the contextual factors that contributed to the ways in which biblical text was written.

What’s your involvement with The Shiloh Project?

When the blog took off last the summer, I knew I wanted to be involved somehow. I wrote an early post about Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and its interpretation of Genesis. Besides the access to a wide audience (more than 3000 views in 48 hours), it was retweeted by author @MargaretAtwood herself. AMAZING!

How does The Shiloh Project relate to your work?

I didn’t set out for activism to be a part of my scholarly life; I actually tried to avoid it. I was trained in a somewhat conventional, historical-critical model, and I intentionally tried to stay away from contemporary meanings of the biblical text because I often found them to be parochial. I spent many years living in the world of the Deuteronomistic History and writing about the composition of the book of Kings. After spending two years teaching courses in Religion and Ethics, I think some of the course prep reading starting sinking in, making me consider the ways in which we regard and teach the biblical text, and in particular the stories about women and those involving sexual assault. The ethical issues I was dealing with in class made it impossible to continue to exclusively read these stories in the context of ancient Israelite society. The biblical narrative, for the most part, is not sufficiently reactive to episodes of sexual violence. It is somewhat commonplace and not a focus of the goals of the text. I found, it’s not enough to say, “That’s the way it was back then!” The Shiloh Project highlights the absence of recognition in the text, taking our preconceived notions and blowing them apart.

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

The Bible is filled with misogyny, sexual exploitation, and violence against women (I’m not saying that’s all there is—there’s a lot of good stuff too). Its prevalence and authoritative role in many religions and Western civilization give credence to these beliefs. The Shiloh Project is trying to defamiliarize these unfortunately commonplace behaviors by highlighting the pervasiveness of prejudices and violence against women in the text that has contributed to normalizing them in our society and throughout history. Recognizing some of the bases for our beliefs, even the subconscious ones, allows us to start moving forward and dismantle those elements of society

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

My research currently is focused on a large project about Dinah in Genesis 34. It is the story of a young woman who is clearly a victim, but the text and most of the history of interpretation are not concerned with what happens to her. I want to explore the ways theories of contemporary rape and purity cultures can help to understand this text. Stay tuned!

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16 Days of Activism – Day 12: Rosinah Gabaitse

by Rosie Gabaitse on

On Day 12 of UN Women’s 16 Days of Activism campaign, we profile Rosinah Gabaitse, Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Botswana.

Tell us about yourself: who are you and what do you do?
My  name is Dr Rosinah Gabaitse and I research and teach on the topic of Biblical Studies at the University of Botswana. I wear many hats: I am an activist, a mother of three sons, an academic and a member of the global community, speaking out and fighting against violence perpetrated on anyone vulnerable, including women and girls. Currently I am a postdoctoral fellow, funded by the Humboldt Foundation, based at the University of Bamberg in Germany.

What’s your involvement with gender activism? Does your work intersect with gender activism? How?
We live in a gendered world and human beings are categorised according to their  socially constructed and assigned gender.  Unfortunately, gender is widely used to determine who has power, who is rendered voiceless, who speaks when and how. We cannot escape the many ways that gender has been used by societies to silence, oppress, and deny access to resources. In my own context violence against women perpetrated most often by men is sadly common. Consequently, my involvement in gender dynamics is personal because I am a woman, and therefore socially assigned the female gender, which has left me, like many women in Botswana, disadvantaged in terms of access to resources, sexual harassment, and being undermined in the work place. Because this is unjust, gender activism is part and parcel of who I am as a woman inhabiting patriarchal structures. I am overt about  teaching egalitarian values and I speak out against the inequality between men and women and between heterosexual and homosexual persons. In Botswana, male homosexual activity is classified a crime against nature – and I resist the injustice of this. I teach that God rejoices in equality and respectful, tolerant and peaceful coexistence, hence my involvement with gender activism.

My work intersects with gender activism in many ways. First, as I teach at the university, my standing in front of the students as a female teaching Biblical Studies is in and of itself engaging in some form of gender activism. Theology is primarily the reserve of men in most cultures, Botswana included. So, when I teach already ordained ministers or trainee preachers about the Bible and the life-giving ways of reading it, I am already making a point about gender. Teaching theology  as a woman is transgressing boundaries on its own in a discipline dominated by men, like my own. Further, I am intentional about being a gender activist. I am intentional about speaking out against, for example, the violence of rape and murder poured out against the concubine in Judges 19, or Hosea’s wife Gomer, or the many other stories of violence narrated in the Bible. After engaging these texts of terror (a phrase from Phyllis Trible), I require that  my audiences (be it in the church or classroom) contextualize the biblical texts in terms of the social realities of our own communities where intimate femicide, shaming women in public, and sexualized physical violence are rife and tearing our communities apart. I am intentional about engaging the many hurts and abuses that women endure, just because they are women. I also write about violence against women as I reflect on how we have bestowed males with enormous power often by using a few select biblical texts, sometimes with violent consequences for women.  However, I also know it is true that the same Bible that has been used to legitimate and support violence is life-giving and can also be used to raise up a man who abhors violence against women. Therefore, my work engages the Bible to deconstruct violence and reconstruct the life-giving power of the Gospel.

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

The Shiloh Project engages scholars and  communities on the topic of rape culture. Obviously the people who are most vulnerable to rape are women and children, because they have been rendered vulnerable and less empowered by dominant social structures. Resisting this is exactly what I do in my little corner in Botswana and The Shiloh Project gives me a forum and a resource for my activities, now and going forward.

How are you going to get active to resist gender-based violence and inequality?
I am already active in this area and I will continue to be so. Like I mentioned above, my teaching  at the University of Botswana mainstreams topics on violence against women – from what the Bible teaches or does not teach about  gender-based violence, to how the churches are silent about the issue, to how their preaching  contributes to violence against women and how  violent men are constructed through particular and toxic kinds of biblical interpretation.

In 2016, I and another young lady from Botswana, Wendy Maano, intentionally selected  one school and worked together to teach children about violence. We had  a series of conversations with children about non-violent ways of communicating and being, teaching them to stand up against violence against the vulnerable girl child in particular. We also had a series of conversations on violence with parents. As part of my community service and in my capacity as motivational speaker, I engage young people in schools on issues of violence against women,  in order defuse rape culture manifestations early on. The boy child, who may have a propensity towards committing violence later on in life, needs to be taught very early on what violence against women is. I want to share a saying going around in a group I belong to made up of men and women and called ‘Women and Men Against All  Sexual Abuse of Children’, which goes like this: ‘Not all men are actual rapists. Some are rape apologists. Some tell rape jokes. Some are victim blamers. Some are silent.’ The saying captures where very many men are and my work with boys really aims at teaching them the ways of responding to gender-based violence. Of course it is important not to commit acts of gender-based violence but things won’t actually get better until men not only forsake violence but also denounce and resist and challenge other forms of gender-based inequality. This is particularly important within a community like mine where there still isn’t much open talk about the topic of rape and gender-based injustice.

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