Sex, Gender and the Sacred

Notes on Contributors vii Introduction: Beyond the 'Religious Turn'? Past, Present and Future Perspectives in Gender History 1 JOANNA DE GROOT AND SUE MORGAN Part I: Crossing Cultures and Transnational Exchanges 1 Witches, Female Priests and Sacred Manoeuvres: (De)Stabilising Gender and Sexuality in a Cuban Religion of African Origin 31 CAROLYN E. WATSON 2 Liberal Religion and the 'Woman Question' between East and West: Perspectives from a Nineteenth-Century Bengali Women's Journal 51 CLARE MIDGLEY 3 Indeterminacy in Meaning: Religious Syncretism and Dynastic Historiography in the Shann¨uren zhuan 67 YUET KEUNG LO 4 'All of Their Customs are Daughters of Their Religion': Baptists in Post-Revolutionary Mexico, 1920s-present 83 KATHLEEN M. McINTYRE 5 Creating the 'Problem Hindu': Sati, Thuggee and Female Infanticide in India, 1800-60 104 DANIEL J. R. GREY Part II: Religion, Embodiment and Subjectivity 6 Engendering Purity and Impurity in Assyriological Studies: A Historiographical Overview 119 ´ERICA COUTO-FERREIRA AND AGN`ES GARCIA-VENTURA 7 Lamentation Motifs in Medieval Hagiography 135 ANNE E. BAILEY 8 Architecture of Desire: Mediating the Female Gaze in the Medieval English Anchorhold 150 MICHELLE M. SAUER 9 The Alluring Beauty of a Leonardesque Ideal: Masculinity and Spirituality in Renaissance Milan 170 MAYA CORRY 10 'Deaf to the Word': Gender, Deafness and Protestantism in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland 195 ESME CLEALL Part III: Religion, Gender and Sexuality 11 The Sexual Shame of the Chaste: 'Abortion Miracles' in Early Medieval Saints' Lives 211 ZUBIN MISTRY 12 'Give Me Chastity': Masculinity and Attitudes to Chastity and Celibacy in the Middle Ages 225 PAT CULLUM 13 Common Soldiers, Same-Sex Love and Religion in the Early Eighteenth-Century British Army 241 SUSAN GANE 14 'Dark Ecstasies': Sex, Mysticism and Psychology in Early Twentieth-Century England 256 JOY DIXON 15 Made Flesh? Gender and Doctrine in Religious Violence in Twentieth-Century Spain 272 MARY VINCENT Part IV: Gender, Religion and Political Activity 16 Conversion Trouble: The Alawis of Hadhramawt, Empire, Gender and the Problem of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century South India 287 WILSON CHACKO JACOB 17 'Fatherland, Religion, Family': Exploring the History of a Slogan in Greece, 1880-1930 304 EFFI GAZI 18 The More Things Change: Debating Gender and Religion in India's Hindu Laws, 1920-2006 315 RINA VERMA WILLIAMS Index 329