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Creative conformity : the feminist politics of U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shi'i women / Elizabeth M. Bucar.

By: Bucar, Elizabeth MMaterial type: TextTextSeries: JSTOR eBooksMoral traditions series: Publisher: Washington, D.C. : Georgetown University Press, ©2011Description: 1 online resource (xxv, 201 pages)Content type: text Media type: computer Carrier type: online resourceISBN: 9781589017528; 1589017528Subject(s): Feminism -- Political aspects -- United States | Feminism -- Political aspects -- Iran | Women -- Political activity -- United States | Women -- Political activity -- Iran | Catholic women -- United States | Muslim women -- Iran | Shiites -- Political activity -- IranAdditional physical formats: Print version:: Creative conformity.DDC classification: 305.48/68273 LOC classification: HQ1206 | .B795 2011Online resources: Click here to view this ebook.
Contents:
Acknowledgments -- Note on transcriptions -- Prologue -- Introduction: Creative conformity, clerical guidance, and a rhetorical turn -- 1. What's a good woman to do? Recasting the symbolics of moral exemplars -- 2. Surprises from the laps of mothers: leveraging the gaps in procreative virtues -- 3. Scripture, sacred law, and hermeneutics: exploring gendered meanings in textual records -- 4. Performance beyond the pulpit: presenting disorderly bodies in public spaces -- 5. Republication of moral discourse: compromise and censorship as political freedom -- Conclusion -- Epilogue: Revisiting Shahla Habibi.
Summary: Much feminist scholarship has viewed Catholicism and Shi'i Islam as two religious traditions that, historically, have greeted feminist claims with skepticism or outright hostility. Creative Conformity demonstrates how certain liberal secular assumptions about these religious traditions are only partly correct and, more importantly, misleading. In this highly original study, Elizabeth Bucar compares the feminist politics of eleven U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shi'i women and explores how these women contest and affirm clerical mandates in order to expand their roles within their religious communit.
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Item type Current location Call number URL Status Date due Barcode
Electronic Book UT Tyler Online
Online 		HQ1206 .B795 2011 (Browse shelf) https://ezproxy.uttyler.edu/login?url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctt2tt3bt Available ocn719388641

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Acknowledgments -- Note on transcriptions -- Prologue -- Introduction: Creative conformity, clerical guidance, and a rhetorical turn -- 1. What's a good woman to do? Recasting the symbolics of moral exemplars -- 2. Surprises from the laps of mothers: leveraging the gaps in procreative virtues -- 3. Scripture, sacred law, and hermeneutics: exploring gendered meanings in textual records -- 4. Performance beyond the pulpit: presenting disorderly bodies in public spaces -- 5. Republication of moral discourse: compromise and censorship as political freedom -- Conclusion -- Epilogue: Revisiting Shahla Habibi.

Print version record.

Much feminist scholarship has viewed Catholicism and Shi'i Islam as two religious traditions that, historically, have greeted feminist claims with skepticism or outright hostility. Creative Conformity demonstrates how certain liberal secular assumptions about these religious traditions are only partly correct and, more importantly, misleading. In this highly original study, Elizabeth Bucar compares the feminist politics of eleven U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shi'i women and explores how these women contest and affirm clerical mandates in order to expand their roles within their religious communit.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

In her intriguing analysis, Bucar (religious studies, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro) compares the way Shi'i and Catholic women create space for modestly feminist interpretations within two deeply masculinist and authoritarian faith traditions. With considerable language skills in English and Persian (Farsi), Bucar examines the logic and rhetorical tactics of the clerical mainstream and of religious women who creatively respond yet still conform to the major dictates of their faith tradition. The book is effectively organized into chapters that first present the clerical logics and then the women who gently challenge with their own creative logics. For example, Shi'i women use faith logics to advance an expanded role in the public political process. Bucar did field research in Iran and the US, complete with interviews of the "creative conformers" about whom she writes with the utmost respect and sensitivity to cross-cultural meaning and interpretation, but her core chapters draw primarily on published documents. Pioneering books like Bucar's have no books that are comparable, but Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety (2005) and Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz's En la Lucha (CH, Feb'94, 31-3212) come close, albeit with separate religious focus. Recommended for libraries in theological seminaries and universities with strong religious and women/gender studies programs. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections. K. Staudt University of Texas at El Paso

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Elizabeth M. Bucar is an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is the coeditor of Does Human Rights Need God?

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