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This book examines narratives of individual religious transformation in Western European literature and culture. Religious individuals, themes, experiences and communities are widely represented in diverse literature and culture, including literary texts and visual arts and media. Taking the subject of religious transformation as an angle from which to study constructions of religion, gender and race, this book reveals through various case studies what authors, documentary makers, film makers and playwrights consider to be important (possible) shifts between the old and the new, continuities and discontinuities, and the formation of the self. The chapters demonstrate how individual religious transformations are understood to be shaped by various intersections of difference, and point at the need to consider gender as always related to and co-constructing religion and race. This transdisciplinary and intimate study provides a fresh lens through which to examine pressing questions regarding the place and future of religion, gender and race in contemporary Western Europe.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
List of contents
Introduction: The Cultural Work of Religious Transformation 1. Leaving... What Exactly? A Cultural and Auto-Ethnographic Account 2. Women's Stories of Becoming Jewish and Muslim 3. Women from Calvinist and Jewish Folds: Negotiating Religious/Secular Demarcations
4. Women Leaving Calvinist and Jewish Folds: Rethinking Gender, and Religion-Race in Dutch Novels about Zeeland
5. Creole and Indigenous Women: Rethinking Europe and Religion
6. Constructing the Muslim Question through Gender and Religion-Race
7. Jews, Muslims, Moroccans: Re-membering and Re-Imagining Complicated Relationships
Conclusion: A Reflection on Normative Affect, Aliveness and Revolutionary Love
Epilogue
About the author
Nella van den Brandt is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at Coventry University, UK. She is Senior Editor of the journal Religion and Gender.
Summary
This book examines narratives of individual religious transformation in Western European literature and culture.
