Papers by Jessica A . Albrecht
Implicit Religion, 2024
This article uses the case study of Sri Lankan women who went to Buddhist and Christian middle-cl... more This article uses the case study of Sri Lankan women who went to Buddhist and Christian middle-class girls' schools in Colombo and Kandy to examine the influence of affect on their intersectional lives. I use the theories of Judith Butler and Sara Ahmed on affect. Affects, they agree, emerge within the brinks of contact, it is the process of being acted upon (being affected) and acting on (affecting)-affect is a specific form of relation. This article interwaves the ethnographic findings with the theoretical discussions to progressively build on it and show precisely the relations between affect, language and intersectional identities. Buddhist and Muslim girls' voices and experiences at middle-class girls' schools in Sri Lanka will be examined from an intersectional perspective. I propose to think of affect as the binding glue of the frames of our intersectional identities.
Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, 2024
The approaches of a global history of religion have made a decisive con- tribution to the underst... more The approaches of a global history of religion have made a decisive con- tribution to the understanding of general concepts such as religion as historically evolved and changeable. They have also shown that the understanding of religion is shaped by its relation with other general concepts such as nation. Gender has hardly been considered in these studies. However, there are interactions between gender, nation, and religion, which we would like to demonstrate in this article using a comparative approach of motherhood. Drawing on case studies from Sri Lanka, Israel and Nigeria, we explain how the comparative element of motherhood functions in different contexts, how identities are constructed, how this affects religion, nation and gender, and how motherhood serves as a mechanism through which oppression operates and in which agency is possible.
Ledas Federlesen. Ansätze einer kritischen Genderforschung zu Religion, 2024
Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau und V&R unipress. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und ... more Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau und V&R unipress. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages.
Med Humanit , 2024
This article engages with the maternal education politics in late colonial Sri Lanka by looking a... more This article engages with the maternal education politics in late colonial Sri Lanka by looking at the implementation of maternal health in the gendered syllabus of middle-class girls’ schools. After decades
of gender-specific education, the 1930s saw a homogenisation of teachings in these schools through the impact of Mary Rutnam’s health manuals. Rutnam was a Canadian doctor who had been living in Sri Lanka for most of her adult life and was seen as a local. She was also active in establishing women’s and girls’ organisations and political groups. Especially the Lanka Mahila Samiti (LMS) was greatly influential and still is today. The LMS specifically aims at educating
the rural women in maternal health and other forms
of hygiene with the goal to increase their political and cultural agency. This article examines the relationship between Rutnam’s handbooks for girls’ schools and the globality of the discourse of motherhood, on the one hand, and the hierarchical divide between the urban middle-class woman and the rural woman, on the other hand. I will argue that by applying the classist discourse of eugenics and hygiene, the teaching of maternal health was transformed in Sri Lanka to create a notion of motherhood that was detached from religion, as it previously was so often framed by it but was highly racialised and classist. This notion of motherhood continues to exist and informs the teaching of sexuality in contemporary Sri Lankan middle-class girls’ schools.
Religion and Gender, 2024
This article is a case study of Musaeus College, Colombo, especially its colonial past and the po... more This article is a case study of Musaeus College, Colombo, especially its colonial past and the postcolonial histories written about it and its founder, Marie Musaeus Higgins. Marie Higgins, the founder of the school, is not only celebrated within the school, but also throughout the country as the mother of girls' education. Strikingly, being a white woman coming from 'the West' to establish this school as well as some vernacular village schools and a teachers' training college, is not criticised within postcolonial Sri Lanka as other imperial remains are. This article will look at exactly this opposition between the memory of Higgins today and the historical sources to illuminate the ways in which a present-day narration of the past is used to construct a postcolonial Buddhist-Sri Lankan identity within which contemporary issues of racialised religion are obscured by Buddhist nationalism.
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES , 2023
The Matrix franchise constructs its narrative and aesthetic elements using a global frame of refe... more The Matrix franchise constructs its narrative and aesthetic elements using a global frame of reference, drawing on many film genres to build its cyberpunk world and heroes. Despite the original film’s utopian visions, The Matrix fell short of its promises in favour of traditional Hollywood ideals, including binary gendered relations and an individualistic hero. The issue was further compounded with The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and their irresolution of the trilogy’s central man versus machine con-flict. With The Matrix Resurrections (2021), the franchise is able to shift its focus and re-present its heroes as inversions of traditional gender norms. This paper explores The Matrix Resurrections’ devia-tions from the original trilogy and proposes a re-reading of “The Matrix” and its heroes as embodying a nonviolent, queer utopia. Strengthened through its religious narratives, the film reconstructs Neo’s heroic masculinity and presents Trinity as his inseparable counterpart, with both characters attaining heroism through their mastering of the body. Resurrections is ultimately able to depict a utopian vision beyond gender binaries and fulfil the promises set out with The Matrix (1999).
Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 2023
The Essay presents provocative peer-reviewed scholarship that examines the field-wide implication... more The Essay presents provocative peer-reviewed scholarship that examines the field-wide implications of the latest re- search queries in Religious Studies. In this edition, Jessica Albrecht, a doctoral student at the University of Heidelberg, stresses the need for scholars to consider the role of the body within the critical study of religion. Albrecht argues that greater attention to material and corporeal relations is nec- essary for Religious Studies to advance its intellectual and pedagogical goals, goals that in the 21st century are presum- ably interested in decolonization. The Bulletin is pleased to publish this expanded version of this article, of which the original appeared in the German publication “Geschlecht, Sexualität, Verkörperung verqueert: Ansätze und Leitfragen in religionswissenschaftlicher Forschung und Lehre,” Handbuch der Religionen (forthcoming).
Orbis Litterarum, 2023
The goddess Isis continues to be an influential figure for the notion of the Divine... more The goddess Isis continues to be an influential figure for the notion of the Divine Feminine in contemporary esoteric and popular thought. However, looking back into the history of modern esotericism, the image of the goddess Isis has been used by Theosophists such as Florence Farr and Frances Swiney to argue for their feminist and more importantly eugenic interpretations of the power of that goddess. This article examines the writings of these two Theosophists together to highlight the eugenics aspects of their vision of Isis as the perfect mother and the super-woman. Through this, Isis became a symbol for a specific gendered aspect of religious eugenics by changing the meaning of the Divine Feminine. This is one of the roots of contemporary Isis interpretations leading to a prevalent idea of fertility and the gendered divine
En-Gender, 2020
Helena Petrovna Blavasky (1831-1891) and Annie Besant (1847-1933) as two influential leaders of
t... more Helena Petrovna Blavasky (1831-1891) and Annie Besant (1847-1933) as two influential leaders of
the Theosophical Society can be seen as remarkable women of their time. Not only as religious
leaders, they transgressed the gender roles of their time and – in different degrees – engaged with
their contemporary feminist discourses. However, as this article shows, biographies on both have
yet failed a greater analysis of gendered aspects as well as situating them in the feminist contexts of
their time. Instead, their biographies including any obscure aspects of gender are explained by
situating them in relation to the Theosophical Society only. However, one such analysis of gender
is useful for biographies, in particular in these case studies. Consequently, as we illustrate in these
examples, we maintain that gender has to be an integral part of biographies.
Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society, 2023
It is no longer a novelty in Religious Studies that translations play an integral role in questio... more It is no longer a novelty in Religious Studies that translations play an integral role in questions of (inter-)cultural contact, comparison, and identity. But the question of what translation means, how it relates to interpretation, and the role of text, language, and practice has not been adequately addressed. In recent years, feminist historical research has published some ground-breaking work addressing this very question. This article uses a cross-disciplinary (literature studies, feminist translation studies and religious studies) approach to examine four different Ramayana versions in late colonial Ceylon and India (1900–1930) written by the Theosophists Annie Besant, Marie Musaeus Higgins and Leelawathy Ramanathan for the purpose of girls’ educa- tion. The differing portrayals of Sita as the “perfect wife” will be used to highlight the importance of theories of translation for the study of global religious history.
Handbuch der Religionen, 2022
Audre Lorde, women’s rights activist, civil rights campaigner, activist and writer, is still one ... more Audre Lorde, women’s rights activist, civil rights campaigner, activist and writer, is still one of the most important and well-known black feminists today. Her life and work are marked by negotiations with a wide variety of discrimination and oppression, but also an example of possibilities for self- empowerment. This article explores Lorde’s biographical influences on her theories and the relevance of history and religion to her self-identification. Exemplary of this are her engagement with Mary Daly and Lorde’s transfor- mation of the goddess Afrekete. The focus is thus on the role of religion as an oppressive element within intersectional identities as well as a potential for empowerment and critique of other structures of oppression.
Handbuch der Religionen, 2022
In recent decades, intersectionality has become an essential category of analysis in the social a... more In recent decades, intersectionality has become an essential category of analysis in the social and cultural sciences. Religion plays a special role as part of intersectional identities. This article begins by reviewing the history and development of the concept of intersectionality. In particular, it focuses on the theories of Audre Lorde, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Patricia Hill Collins. In a second step, the role of religion as an intersectional category and of religious studies for intersectionality research itself will be examined. Since intersectionality is not a fixed concept but is constantly evolving, two spe- cific forms of critique of the recent understanding of intersectionality will also be addressed, especially with regard to the meaning of religion in its dual effect as an instrument of oppression and a possibility of empowerment.
Entremons: UPF Journal of World History
This article looks at the global, entangled history of girls’ education in late colonial Sri Lank... more This article looks at the global, entangled history of girls’ education in late colonial Sri Lanka. This article looks at two European women educators, Lilian Nixon and Florence Farr, who came to the island to become principals of girl’s schools at the beginning of the twentieth century. Both had been educated at the Cheltenham Ladies College, England, whose impact on the education of girls, in England and the Empire, is crucial. By looking at the discussions on girls’s education at CLC, Ladies’ College (Nixon), Colombo, and Ramanathan College (Farr), Jaffna, Sri Lanka, this article proposes a new, global historical, approach to the history of girls’ education and female empowerment, colonial power structures and postcolonial transformations. I will argue that the answer to the question whether colonial girls’ education and its successors is seen as empowering, depends on the conceptualisation of empowerment and agency in their relation to religion. The case study of Sri Lanka can, ...
Amy Hale (ed.) Essays on Women in Western Esotericism, 2021
All emanations are from that mystery of the Divine Mother, and must return to it. (…) Even as sci... more All emanations are from that mystery of the Divine Mother, and must return to it. (…) Even as science reveals that all life has a feminine origin. (…) The Feminine is therefore the inner nature of man, and woman as the most highly evolved organism (…) is the objective representative of the Divine Feminine. 1
Opening Pandora’s Box, 2020
La Rosa di Paracelso, 2018
Theosophist Frances Swiney (1847–1922) was a writer and women’s rights activist. She was mainly c... more Theosophist Frances Swiney (1847–1922) was a writer and women’s rights activist. She was mainly concerned with eugenics, sexuality, and feminism. Swiney’s writings and founding the League of Isis in 1907, directly reflects her interest in Theosophy. In her books; The Cosmic Procession or The Feminine Principle in Evolution (1906), The Mystery of the Circle and the Cross (1908), and The Esoteric Teaching of the Gnostics (1909), as well as in several articles in contemporary local and feminist newspapers and theosophical periodicals; Swiney, influenced by G. R. S. Mead, adapted Theosophical interpretations of “Gnosticism” for her feminist argumentation of a Divine Feminine within a cosmic evolution. She was personally and ideationally connected to the Theosophical Society and, therefore, influenced by its interpretations of Gnosticism and its ideas on gender, sexuality, and race. Combining theories on gender, religion, identity, discourse, and individual agency; this article answers the question to what extent and in what ways did Frances Swiney’s appropriations of Gnosticism influence her feminism and vice versa. It aims to illustrate how a biographical approach and focus on Frances Swiney as an influential, though controversial, individual in the British women’s suffrage and women’s rights movement, as well as within esoteric circles, can help to understand the interaction between personal experience and societal change (the possibility of an individual gendered agency in discourse). It aims to enhance the acknowledgement of the interrelation between gender, sexuality and religion, precisely alternative spiritualities and appropriations of “Gnostic” ideas, at that time. This piece stresses the importance of religion and spirituality, precisely, the influence of Gnostic ideas, on conceptions of gender, sex, and sexuality in the British first wave feminism. It puts this question in relation to the ongoing debate concerning the discursive emergence of religion, spirituality/esotericism, and science or secular/rational thought.
This article analyses the writings and lives of Jeanne Deroin and Jenny P. d'Héricourt as example... more This article analyses the writings and lives of Jeanne Deroin and Jenny P. d'Héricourt as examples of the notions of reproduction and motherhood, gendered citizenship and suffrage in nineteenth century feminism in France. Relating each to canonical male thinkers, historiography has failed to view Deroin and d'Héricourt together and to take them seriously as thinkers in their own right. Therefore, this article uses the concepts of gendered agency and reverse discourse to look at the relation between Deroin's and d'Hércourt's individual gendered experience and their feminist aims. Their example demonstrates that the discourse of suffrage and citizenship in nineteenth century France was inherently gendered; concomitantly gendered experience was linked to the discursive power relations. This reveals why it was possible and necessary for feminists to relate to the dominant discourse of sexual difference to articulate their feminist demands. It justified the need for women's citizenship, suffrage and equal rights by positively re-evaluating women's qualities connected to motherhood and sentiment; and viewing reproduction as the fulfilment of a citizen's duty to be rewarded with citizenship.
Thesis Chapters by Jessica A . Albrecht
Master's Thesis , 2018
This dissertation examines the life and work of Mrs. Rosa Frances Swiney (1847-1922), the feminis... more This dissertation examines the life and work of Mrs. Rosa Frances Swiney (1847-1922), the feminist, eugenicist, and Theosophist. It uses her example to illustrate the impact Theosophy had on Britain’s First Wave Feminism, as well as to examine how her own historical background in imperial Britain influenced her interpretations of Theosophical ideas and concepts.
Therefore, this dissertation uses a biographical approach to analyse Swiney’s individual and gendered agency in the feminist and religious discourses of her time. It applies theories on the subject and its relation to its surrounding discourse to examine the possibilities and boundaries of Swiney’s agency, and, therefore, her impact on esotericism as well as British feminism.
It concludes that Swiney’s feminism was not only strongly shaped by Theosophy; in addition, her interpretations of Theosophy were highly influenced by the contemporary imperial discourses on motherhood, reproduction, and race, which affected Britain’s First Wave Feminism. This dissertation will illustrate how these contexts made Swiney’s individual agency possible, but, at the same time, restricted her impact on either Theosophy or feminism. It argues that the influence alternative religious, or esoteric movements, such as the Theosophical Society had on contexts like British feminism cannot be understood without analysing the specific historical context which produced the theosophical feminist individual.
Bachelor Thesis, 2017
(English)
This bachelor thesis deals with the question of how contemporary fashion in India affe... more (English)
This bachelor thesis deals with the question of how contemporary fashion in India affects Hindu nationalist identity formation. For this, representations, identity formation, and the construction of meaning are examined. The processes around the emergence of collective, cultural identities are traced, which should make it possible to critically question (religious) self-conceptions. Thus, the work is based on an understanding of religious studies as cultural studies. This thesis uses historical methods as well as poststructuralist and postcolonial theories.
The question of how the recent fashion discourse in India contributes to the formation of a Hindu nationalist identity will be addressed as follows. The first chapter will clarify the most important theoretical presuppositions regarding the underlying understanding of identity formation. After that, after a brief discussion of Hindu nationalism, the focus will be on two aspects of Indian fashion discourse that have emerged in neoliberalism since the 1980s: the Indian middle classes and high fashion.
The thesis of the present work is that continuous delimitations are essential for the establishment of social practices. These are then declared in retrospect as traditions, which solidifies their self-evident and identities are constructed and maintained.
Book Reviews by Jessica A . Albrecht
Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, 2023
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Papers by Jessica A . Albrecht
of gender-specific education, the 1930s saw a homogenisation of teachings in these schools through the impact of Mary Rutnam’s health manuals. Rutnam was a Canadian doctor who had been living in Sri Lanka for most of her adult life and was seen as a local. She was also active in establishing women’s and girls’ organisations and political groups. Especially the Lanka Mahila Samiti (LMS) was greatly influential and still is today. The LMS specifically aims at educating
the rural women in maternal health and other forms
of hygiene with the goal to increase their political and cultural agency. This article examines the relationship between Rutnam’s handbooks for girls’ schools and the globality of the discourse of motherhood, on the one hand, and the hierarchical divide between the urban middle-class woman and the rural woman, on the other hand. I will argue that by applying the classist discourse of eugenics and hygiene, the teaching of maternal health was transformed in Sri Lanka to create a notion of motherhood that was detached from religion, as it previously was so often framed by it but was highly racialised and classist. This notion of motherhood continues to exist and informs the teaching of sexuality in contemporary Sri Lankan middle-class girls’ schools.
the Theosophical Society can be seen as remarkable women of their time. Not only as religious
leaders, they transgressed the gender roles of their time and – in different degrees – engaged with
their contemporary feminist discourses. However, as this article shows, biographies on both have
yet failed a greater analysis of gendered aspects as well as situating them in the feminist contexts of
their time. Instead, their biographies including any obscure aspects of gender are explained by
situating them in relation to the Theosophical Society only. However, one such analysis of gender
is useful for biographies, in particular in these case studies. Consequently, as we illustrate in these
examples, we maintain that gender has to be an integral part of biographies.
Thesis Chapters by Jessica A . Albrecht
Therefore, this dissertation uses a biographical approach to analyse Swiney’s individual and gendered agency in the feminist and religious discourses of her time. It applies theories on the subject and its relation to its surrounding discourse to examine the possibilities and boundaries of Swiney’s agency, and, therefore, her impact on esotericism as well as British feminism.
It concludes that Swiney’s feminism was not only strongly shaped by Theosophy; in addition, her interpretations of Theosophy were highly influenced by the contemporary imperial discourses on motherhood, reproduction, and race, which affected Britain’s First Wave Feminism. This dissertation will illustrate how these contexts made Swiney’s individual agency possible, but, at the same time, restricted her impact on either Theosophy or feminism. It argues that the influence alternative religious, or esoteric movements, such as the Theosophical Society had on contexts like British feminism cannot be understood without analysing the specific historical context which produced the theosophical feminist individual.
This bachelor thesis deals with the question of how contemporary fashion in India affects Hindu nationalist identity formation. For this, representations, identity formation, and the construction of meaning are examined. The processes around the emergence of collective, cultural identities are traced, which should make it possible to critically question (religious) self-conceptions. Thus, the work is based on an understanding of religious studies as cultural studies. This thesis uses historical methods as well as poststructuralist and postcolonial theories.
The question of how the recent fashion discourse in India contributes to the formation of a Hindu nationalist identity will be addressed as follows. The first chapter will clarify the most important theoretical presuppositions regarding the underlying understanding of identity formation. After that, after a brief discussion of Hindu nationalism, the focus will be on two aspects of Indian fashion discourse that have emerged in neoliberalism since the 1980s: the Indian middle classes and high fashion.
The thesis of the present work is that continuous delimitations are essential for the establishment of social practices. These are then declared in retrospect as traditions, which solidifies their self-evident and identities are constructed and maintained.
Book Reviews by Jessica A . Albrecht
of gender-specific education, the 1930s saw a homogenisation of teachings in these schools through the impact of Mary Rutnam’s health manuals. Rutnam was a Canadian doctor who had been living in Sri Lanka for most of her adult life and was seen as a local. She was also active in establishing women’s and girls’ organisations and political groups. Especially the Lanka Mahila Samiti (LMS) was greatly influential and still is today. The LMS specifically aims at educating
the rural women in maternal health and other forms
of hygiene with the goal to increase their political and cultural agency. This article examines the relationship between Rutnam’s handbooks for girls’ schools and the globality of the discourse of motherhood, on the one hand, and the hierarchical divide between the urban middle-class woman and the rural woman, on the other hand. I will argue that by applying the classist discourse of eugenics and hygiene, the teaching of maternal health was transformed in Sri Lanka to create a notion of motherhood that was detached from religion, as it previously was so often framed by it but was highly racialised and classist. This notion of motherhood continues to exist and informs the teaching of sexuality in contemporary Sri Lankan middle-class girls’ schools.
the Theosophical Society can be seen as remarkable women of their time. Not only as religious
leaders, they transgressed the gender roles of their time and – in different degrees – engaged with
their contemporary feminist discourses. However, as this article shows, biographies on both have
yet failed a greater analysis of gendered aspects as well as situating them in the feminist contexts of
their time. Instead, their biographies including any obscure aspects of gender are explained by
situating them in relation to the Theosophical Society only. However, one such analysis of gender
is useful for biographies, in particular in these case studies. Consequently, as we illustrate in these
examples, we maintain that gender has to be an integral part of biographies.
Therefore, this dissertation uses a biographical approach to analyse Swiney’s individual and gendered agency in the feminist and religious discourses of her time. It applies theories on the subject and its relation to its surrounding discourse to examine the possibilities and boundaries of Swiney’s agency, and, therefore, her impact on esotericism as well as British feminism.
It concludes that Swiney’s feminism was not only strongly shaped by Theosophy; in addition, her interpretations of Theosophy were highly influenced by the contemporary imperial discourses on motherhood, reproduction, and race, which affected Britain’s First Wave Feminism. This dissertation will illustrate how these contexts made Swiney’s individual agency possible, but, at the same time, restricted her impact on either Theosophy or feminism. It argues that the influence alternative religious, or esoteric movements, such as the Theosophical Society had on contexts like British feminism cannot be understood without analysing the specific historical context which produced the theosophical feminist individual.
This bachelor thesis deals with the question of how contemporary fashion in India affects Hindu nationalist identity formation. For this, representations, identity formation, and the construction of meaning are examined. The processes around the emergence of collective, cultural identities are traced, which should make it possible to critically question (religious) self-conceptions. Thus, the work is based on an understanding of religious studies as cultural studies. This thesis uses historical methods as well as poststructuralist and postcolonial theories.
The question of how the recent fashion discourse in India contributes to the formation of a Hindu nationalist identity will be addressed as follows. The first chapter will clarify the most important theoretical presuppositions regarding the underlying understanding of identity formation. After that, after a brief discussion of Hindu nationalism, the focus will be on two aspects of Indian fashion discourse that have emerged in neoliberalism since the 1980s: the Indian middle classes and high fashion.
The thesis of the present work is that continuous delimitations are essential for the establishment of social practices. These are then declared in retrospect as traditions, which solidifies their self-evident and identities are constructed and maintained.
More information and the full book here:
https://engenderacademia.com/edited-volume-en-gender-2021/
urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-323422