Women, Ritual and Textiles

During the Classical and Hellenistic periods in South Italy and Sicily women performed rituals that involved transgressive behavior. Their actions fell outside the gender norms that operated in their non-ritual contexts. While conducting festivals for water nymphs, for example, or for Persephone and Demeter (although more commonly Persephone alone), the women often engaged in activity that fell under the category identified by ritual theorists as "rituals of inversion." Some of these analysts have proposed that religious performances of this sort can confer on the participants a type of agency that has the potential to carry over into non-ritual contexts. This theoretical position differs substantially from that taken by functionalists, who see these transgressive cult-related activities providing a pressure-valve by temporarily releasing tensions that accumulate in the lives of disadvantaged members of the population, such as women living under patriarchal control. On this reading a temporary relaxing of the rules would lessen the risk of destabilizing the normal social order. This paper makes the claim that certain festivals of the Greek West empowered women in other social contexts, enabling them to compose erotic songs, for example, or to enjoy the parody of comic theatre and even playfully to denounce wrongdoers in public venues. Examples of this will follow, but I begin with a look at the theoretical insights that have informed my reading of the evidence. This theoretical material will draw upon work in performance theory, anthropology, ritual theory, social and gender theory that argues for particular rites being sites for contestation of the norms operating in the participants' broader social context. This work challenges not only functionalist approaches to ritual but also other widely accepted interpretations of rituals of inversion.

Religious Individualisation Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives. , 2020

In Religious Individualisation Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives. edited by M. Fuchs, A. Linkenbach, M. Mulsow, M., B.-C. Otto, R. B. Parson, and J. Rüpke, 541-558. Walter de Gruyter GmbH. See https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/498381

Scholarship on ancient Greco-Roman magic, over time and place, has largely focused on the role and identity of ritual practitioners, investigating the nature and source of their perceived expertise and often locating it in their linguistic skills. Less attention has been paid to those identified as the targets of magical rituals, who tend to be described as passive recipients of the ritual or the social power of another. In contrast, drawing on the theory of ritual form developed by Robert McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson, alongside the ritualization theories of Catherine Bell, this article argues that victims of magic were also agents of ritual. Focusing on an experience of hostile magic reported by the fourth-century CE orator Libanius, it explores how conceptions of magical power were co-created by spell-makers and their so-called victims and should be regarded as relational, that is, as emerging from the interactions of people and groups.

2017

Eugesta, 2018

The famous dedication by Xenokrateia to the river god Kephisos and other divinities not far from the city of Athens in c. 400 BC (NM 2756; IG I3 987; IG II2 4547) is a rare example of a sizeable, public ego-document by a citizen woman. Close reading of the iconography of the votive relief, of the dedicatory epigram and the inscribed offering list, and comparison with other private foundations allow reconstructing Xenokrateia’s sense of her identity and the religious, intellectual and economic competences she must have had to bring this dedication about. As a literate, self-confident and pious Athenian citizen, mother, widow and heiress, she spent on estimation several hundred drachmas on her dedication, pace the law quoted at Is. 10.10. The plot of land involved was either her own property or a place already sacred to Kephisos and the Nymphs, to which she added her own dedication. For the latter possibility, a double relief dedicated by Kephisodotos to the hero Echelos and other deities (NM 1783) provides additional evidence. Xenokrateia’s dedication is exceptional for the detailed, qualitative analysis it allows, but it is not exceptional in quantitative terms: numerous dedications by women show them using similar competences. This approach to the evidence, initiated in recent scholarship, may open new windows on women’s agency in classical Athens. Mots-clés : Xenokrateia – private foundation – citizenship – identity – competence – literacy – numeracy – votive relief – dedication – women’s agency – Is. 10.10 – classical Athens

61st Political Studies Association Annual Conference – 'Transforming Politics: New Synergies', London, 19-21 April 2011.

In Germany, religious education at state schools and theological teachers’ training are to be given “in accordance with the tenets of the religious community”. In the last 15 years, Islamic religious education and Islamic Theology have been established at school and university level. Faculties at the Islamic theological departments and the future Islam teachers are expected to be reformers of Islam and prototypes of the “good Muslim”. Critics, however, consider these steps an attempt for social control of Muslims. In my paper, I will look at the way German Islamic Theology designs its curricula between the requirements to teach Islam in accordance to the tenets of Muslim organizations and the public interest of having an Islam compatible to Western society. I will examine in which sense Islam as a subject in public education presents a litmus test to the relation between state, society, and the religious (Muslim) community in Germany.

" în timp ce-mi trăgeam rochia încet pe mine, mă gândeam la efectul pe care-l voi produce la intrarea în sufrageria aceea liniştită de ţară. Mi-am trecut pentru ul tima oară peria prin păr şi m-am întors să mă privesc în oglindă. Era prima dată când o îmbrăcam pentru o petrecere, fiind şi fardată în acelaşi timp, iar impac tul mi-a tăiat până şi mie răsuflarea. Ah, Doamne, mi-am zis în sinea mea, îi voi incita pe toţi diseară. Eram hotărâtă să-mi fac o intrare în toată regula."