Canadian Women Shaping Diasporic Religious Identities

by Becky R. Lee (Editor), Terry Tak-ling Woo (Editor)

Overview

This collection of essays explores how women from a variety of religious and cultural communities have contributed to the richly textured, pluralistic society of Canada. Focusing on women’s religiosity, it examines the ways in which they have carried and conserved, and brought forward and transformed their cultures—old and new—in modern Canada.

Each essay explores the ways in which the religiosities of women serve as locations for both the assertion and the refashioning of individual and communal identity in transcultural contexts. Three shared assumptions guide these essays: religion plays a dynamic role in the shaping and reshaping of social cultures; women are active participants in their transmission and their transformation; and a focus on women's activities within their religious traditions—often informal and unofficial—provides new perspectives on the intersection of religion, gender, and transnationalism.

Since the first European migrations, Canada has been shaped by immigrant communities as they negotiated the tension between preserving their religious and cultural traditions and embracing the new opportunities in their adopted homeland. Viewing those interactions through the lens of women’s religiosity, the essays in this collection model an innovative approach and provide new perspectives for students and researchers of Canadian Studies, Religious Studies, and Women’s Studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771121545
Publisher:	Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2016
Series:	Studies in Women and Religion , #13
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	389
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Becky R. Lee is an associate professor in Humanities at York University. Her research and teaching are concerned with the intersection of religion and gender. A historian of religion, Lee’s research has focused primarily on birthing rites in the middle ages. Her teaching centres on more contemporary issues including the relationship between religion and marginalization.

Terry Tak-ling Woo teaches in the Humanities Department at York University. She is interested in the roles women occupy and negotiate for themselves through religion. Her publications include “Chinese and Korean Religions” in Oxtoby and Amore (eds.), World Religions; and “Emotions and Self-cultivation in Nü Lunyu (A Woman’s Analects).”

Table of Contents

Table of Contents for Canadian Women Shaping Diasporic Religious Identities, edited by Becky R. Lee and Terry Tak-ling Woo

Section I: Christianity and Judaism in Newfoundland, Ontario, and Alberta

1. “He's My Best Friend“: Relationality, Materiality, and the Manipulation of Motherhood in Devotion to St Gerard Majella in Newfoundland | Marion Bowman

2. “She Couldn't Come to the Table 'til She Was Churched”: Anglican Women, Childbirth, and Embodied Christian Practice in Conception Bay, Newfoundland | Bonnie Morgan

3. On the Margins of Church and Society: Roman Catholic Feminisms in English-Speaking Canada | Becky R. Lee

4. Unveiling Leah: Examining Women's Voices in Two Canadian Jewish Worship Services | Aviva Goldberg

Section II: New Religions in Canada

5. Charity Chicks: A Discourse-Analysis of Religious Self-Identification by Rural Canadian Mormon Women | Katherine Power

6. “The Whole World Opened Up”: Women in Canadian Theosophy | Gillian McCann

7. Belief, Identity, and Social Action in the Lives of Bahá'í Women | Lynn Echevarria

Section III: South Asian Religions in Southwest Ontario

8. Being Hindu in Canada: Experiences of Women | Anne Pearson and Preeti Nayak

9. Women in Hinduism: Ritual Leadership in the Adhi Parasakthi Temple Society of Canada | Nanette Spina