Publications
New Publications from Religious Studies Faculty
Radically Feminist of Monstrously Feminine?: Witches and Goddesses in Guadagnino's Suspiria (2018)
By Dr. Lindsay Macumber
Abstract:
Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Suspiria explicitly and implicitly incorporates two connected myths, witchcraft and goddess centered matriarchal prehistory. The fact that each of these myths have been claimed by feminists in myriad ways may explain Guadagnino’s claim that Suspiria is a great feminist film that escapes the male gaze. In this article, I argue that Guadagnino’s representation of these myths lays bare their misogynistic origins and perpetuates, rather than subverts, patriarchal power structures.
Individual and Collective Karma in the Works of Thích Nhất Hạnh
By Dr. Alec Soucy
In: The Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Volume 19, Number 1, Winter 2024 (Available Online)
Abstract:
The version of Buddhism put forward by Thích Nhất Hạnh in his writing and teaching has led some scholars and Buddhist practitioners to question whether he is representative of Vietnamese Buddhism. This essay asserts that while Thích Nhất Hạnh’s framing of Buddhist doctrine was highly influenced by globalized Buddhist currents, it cannot be separated from the Vietnamese context from which he emerged. Through an examination of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s writings about collective karma [cộng nghiệp], this essay shows that his ideas of karma overlap with common understandings of karma in Vietnam, which see karma as being shared in the community and especially in the family. This view of karma stands in contrast to the individualism that is central to the modernist framing of Buddhism.
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African Pentecostalism in a Changing Economic and Democratic Global Order
By Dr. James Kwateng-Yeboah
In: The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, 2022 (Oloruntoba, S.O., Falola, T., editors)
Abstract:
Despite proliferating literature about the changing global order, scant attention has been paid to religion as a source of transformation. Drawing on recent observations and literature of Ghanaian and Nigerian Pentecostalism, this chapter examines how African Pentecostalism alters the meaning and practice of two foundational principles of the global order: nation-state democracy and neoliberal economic development. Regarding the latter, African Pentecostals offer learning avenues for African governments on the mobilization of funds from their own populations through principles of reciprocity, accountability, and belonging. Regarding the former, African Pentecostal leaders who occupy state and civil society institutions tend to resist secularist assumptions of democratic governance and electoral process. Altogether, this chapter posits a religious domain of African agency in the changing global order, wherein Pentecostal religious actors tend to reconstruct and renegotiate modernity’s dominant principles and institutions.
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The Prosperity Gospel: Debating Modernity in Africa and the African Diaspora
By Dr. James Kwateng-Yeboah
In: Journal of Africana Religions , Volume 9, Issue 1, 2021: Pages 42-69.
Abstract:
Debates over the role of Pentecostalism in effecting modernity through its widespread “prosperity gospel” remain inconclusive. Though Weber's Protestant Ethic has been persistently invoked, sociological analyses reveal that the prosperity gospel challenges dominant Weberian conceptualizations of modernity. On one hand, the doctrine refutes Weber's central claim of modern societies by its pervasive “enchantment.” On the other hand, the prosperity gospel shares modern traits of human autonomy and entrepreneurship. Does the prosperity gospel demonstrate simultaneously modern and antimodern themes? Using cases from Africa and the African diaspora, this essay critically reviews how modernity has functioned as a complicated category for analyses of the prosperity gospel and for Pentecostalism. Showing that modernity is mediated irreducibly by the historical and cultural backgrounds of the society it encounters, the essay argues for the potency of the “multiple modernities” paradigm as an analytical framework that better captures realities of Africana contexts, notably Pentecostalism and the prosperity gospel.
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Migration
By Dr. James Kwateng-Yeboah
In: Brill's Encyclopedia of Global Pentecostalism Online, 2019 (Michael Wilkinson, Connie Au, Jörg Haustein, Todd M. Johnson, editors)
About:
The rise of Pentecostalism is one of the most important changes in Christianity in the past century. Growing rapidly, it has expanded throughout the world.
How many Pentecostals are there in the world? How did Pentecostalism grow so fast? What do Pentecostals believe? What role did revivals play like the Azusa Street Revival in the USA or the Mukti Mission Revival in India? What do Pentecostals experience when they speak in tongues, pray for healing, and seek prosperity?
Brill's Encyclopedia of Global Pentecostalism answers such questions, drawing upon disciplines such as anthropology, biblical studies, economics, gender studies, history, theology, and other areas of related interest.
Nationalism, Globalism and the Re-establishment of the Trúc Lâm Thi?n Buddhist sect in Northern Vietnam
By Dr. Alec Soucy
Chapter 10 in: Modernity and Re-enchantment: Religion in Post-revolutionary Vietnam (Philip Taylor, editor )
By Dr. Alec Soucy
Chapter 10 in: Modernity and Re-enchantment: Religion in Post-revolutionary Vietnam (Philip Taylor, editor )
Summary
In recent years Zen ( Thi?n ) Buddhism has started to emerge as an alternative to the traditional beliefs and practices of Pure Land ( T?nh Ð? ) Buddhism that has predominated in northern Vietnam. Lay Buddhists in Hanoi have begun to make meditation a central focus of their Buddhist practice and to speak of the Zen school of Buddhism as being foundational for Vietnamese Buddhism. The re-establishment of the Trúc Lâm school of Buddhism, which proclaims Trúc Lâm Zen as a uniquely Vietnamese school, stands at the centre of this movement. The Trúc Lâm school was reintroduced only recently to its historical birth place at Yên T? Mountain by the students of the southern master Thích Thanh T?. Three years ago a monk from Hue, who had studied in Ðà L?t under Thích Thanh T?, founded Sùng Phúc Thi?n T?. This monastery and meditation hall in Gìa Lâm, on the outskirts of Hanoi is the first in the area that, to my knowledge, specifically opens meditation to members of the laity. The research for this paper was conducted over several weeks in 2004-2005, with most of the information coming from interviews with lay followers and monastics at Sùng Phúc Thi?n T?, and augmented with information from web-based and print publications.
This paper examines the appeal of new styles of meditative practice to contemporary lay practitioners in suburban Hanoi while also investigating the strategies that they use to differentiate themselves from other lay practitioners of Pure Land Buddhism, which remains the normative Buddhism in northern Vietnam. It also looks at the way in which followers of this school have internalized discourses of nationalism, superstition and globalization in the self-conception of their practice. Finally, it explores the contributing role played by the state's discourses on religion and national culture and the influence of transnational Buddhism in the unique reinterpretations of what constitutes authentic Vietnamese Buddhism.