Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Religious history
- All Subjects: Devotional literature, English (Middle)
- Creators: Sarat, Leah
- Resource Type: Text
Description
Lost and Found:
Jewish Women Recovering Tradition, Remaking Themselves
This study explores the turn towards stringently observant Orthodox Judaism among lesser observant Jewish women ages late 40s to early 70s residing in a rapidly growing Sunbelt city. It seeks to answer three questions: what is the impulse that inspires such a fundamental life change; what is the process for making that change; and how does that change impact the sense of self, as individuals and within families and communities?
It is an ethnographic study that uses a qualitative, modified grounded theory methodology to gather and analyze data, allowing themes to arise from extensive field observation and intensive participant interviews. The data establish an underlying phenomenon of lost and found, a personal loss, compounded by a lessening or loss of religious grounding, which inspires a recovery of traditional religion and a remaking of identity.
Other key findings manifest a fluidity of religious identity and a propensity for change; the social nature of such identity and the significance of communal belonging in its progression; the impact of memory, history, generation, life course position and geographic location in inspiring and informing such a progression; a reframing of feminist assertions and gender roles within a traditional religious framework; an assertion of the existence of women’s interior life and assumption of personal responsibility for its realization; a reconciliation of a rhetoric of choice and individual autonomy within a traditional religious system.
In contrast to this study, previous scholarship focused on younger men and women, most in their 20s or 30s, the majority unmarried and without children. The prior studies took place several decades earlier in major metropolitan areas, most along the Eastern seaboard and in the Midwest, more densely populated with larger, older and more established Jewish communities.
This study elucidates a shift towards more traditional religion within American Judaism and within the broader context of American religion. It provides fertile ground for future study of age and stage of life, feminism and gender roles, individual autonomy, choice, communal responsibility and religious change.
Jewish Women Recovering Tradition, Remaking Themselves
This study explores the turn towards stringently observant Orthodox Judaism among lesser observant Jewish women ages late 40s to early 70s residing in a rapidly growing Sunbelt city. It seeks to answer three questions: what is the impulse that inspires such a fundamental life change; what is the process for making that change; and how does that change impact the sense of self, as individuals and within families and communities?
It is an ethnographic study that uses a qualitative, modified grounded theory methodology to gather and analyze data, allowing themes to arise from extensive field observation and intensive participant interviews. The data establish an underlying phenomenon of lost and found, a personal loss, compounded by a lessening or loss of religious grounding, which inspires a recovery of traditional religion and a remaking of identity.
Other key findings manifest a fluidity of religious identity and a propensity for change; the social nature of such identity and the significance of communal belonging in its progression; the impact of memory, history, generation, life course position and geographic location in inspiring and informing such a progression; a reframing of feminist assertions and gender roles within a traditional religious framework; an assertion of the existence of women’s interior life and assumption of personal responsibility for its realization; a reconciliation of a rhetoric of choice and individual autonomy within a traditional religious system.
In contrast to this study, previous scholarship focused on younger men and women, most in their 20s or 30s, the majority unmarried and without children. The prior studies took place several decades earlier in major metropolitan areas, most along the Eastern seaboard and in the Midwest, more densely populated with larger, older and more established Jewish communities.
This study elucidates a shift towards more traditional religion within American Judaism and within the broader context of American religion. It provides fertile ground for future study of age and stage of life, feminism and gender roles, individual autonomy, choice, communal responsibility and religious change.
ContributorsCabot, Vicki (Author) / Gereboff, Joel (Thesis advisor) / Benor, Sarah B (Committee member) / Sarat, Leah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
“The Moral Sense of Touch: Teaching Tactile Values in Late Medieval England” investigates the intersections of popular science and religious education in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the project draws together a range of textual artifacts, from scientific manuals to private prayerbooks, to reconstruct the vast network of touch supporting the late medieval moral syllabus. I argue that new scientific understandings of the five senses, and specifically the sense of touch, had a great impact on the processes, procedures, and parlances of vernacular religious instruction in late medieval England. The study is organized around a set of object lessons that realize the materiality of devotional reading practices. Over the course of investigation, I explore how the tactile values reinforcing medieval conceptions of pleasure and pain were cultivated to educate and, in effect, socialize popular reading audiences. Writing techniques and technologies—literary forms, manuscript designs, illustration programs—shaped the reception and user-experience of devotional texts. Focusing on the cultural life of the sense of touch, “The Moral Sense of Touch” provides a new context for a sense based study of historical literatures, one that recovers the centrality of touch in cognitive, aesthetic, and moral discourses.
ContributorsRussell, Arthur J. (Author) / Newhauser, Richard G (Thesis advisor) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Malo, Robyn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
In 1972, when relationships between the Mexican and USA Presbyterian denominations fractured, within a few years they found agreement in a newly crafted covenant, “A New Relation in Joint Mission.” At the denominational level, the leadership envisioned a new paradigm for international missional practice in which both entities mutually shared in the developmental and oversight processes. This was an exercise in diplomacy as the denominations were distinctly different in theological perspectives and expectations for program implementation. It was on the local and regional level, motivated by their deep convictions of faith, that a cadre of binational mission workers, pastors, and volunteers built meaningful, intercultural relationships under the Presbyterian Border Ministry (PBM), established in 1984. To implement the denominations’ new concepts of mutuality in mission, the PBM established binational ministry sites in twin-cities along the México/USA border. The PBM promoted spiritual growth, articulated border realities through the lens of faith, and served with and for those in need of support. Geographically, and for the purposes of this dissertation, the border region represents two spaces, the sites of engagement in the settled communities at the edges of two nations and the programmatic extensions into the interior of the two countries. In their roles of advocacy, the ministries engaged at the highest levels of both the denominations and the seats of political power, far from the border. Contextually, the México/USA border region, rich in its complexity, is a space of simultaneous conjunction and separation, influenced by its history, international politics, cultural diversity, economic disparity, and religious presence.
The intent of this historical analysis is to share an important history that provides insights into the efficacy of binational ministry, to identify the contributions of bicultural engagement, and to consider the value and insights of faith-based perspectives when addressing complex border realities and social issues such as migration. It asks how the binational mission, in collaboration with faith-based and secular partners, has affected the lives of individuals, and made an impact on local, regional, national, and international political, economic, social, and cultural concerns.
ContributorsMay, Catherine Louise (Author) / Sarat, Leah (Thesis advisor) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Thesis advisor) / Avina, Alexander (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021