Sex, Gender and the Sacred -- CONTENTS -- NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS -- Introduction: Beyond the 'Religious Turn'? Past, Present and Future Perspectives in Gender History -- Past perspectives -- Present perspectives -- Crossing cultures, and transcultural exchanges -- Religion, embodiment and subjectivity -- Religion, gender and sexuality -- Gender, religion and political activity -- Future perspectives -- Notes -- Part I Crossing Cultures and Transnational Exchanges -- 1 Witches, Female Priests and Sacred Manoeuvres: (De)Stabilising Gender and Sexuality in a Cuban Religion of African Origin -- Ocha-Ifá: African roots, Cuban praxis -- Witches, warlocks and the spectre of history -- The Egbe Gëlèdé: contemporary manoeuvres in gender, sexuality and the sacred -- 'Women penetrate Ifá' -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 2 Liberal Religion and the 'Woman Question' between East and West: Perspectives from a Nineteenth-Century Bengali Women's Journal -- Unitarian women activists as exemplars for Brahmo women -- The 'new' Bengali woman and the spectre of the 'strong-minded' woman -- Communications between Unitarian and Brahmo women -- Liberal religion and the 'woman question' between east and west -- Notes -- 3 Indeterminacy in Meaning: Religious Syncretism and Dynastic Historiography in the Shannüren zhuan -- The Shannüren zhuan -- The editor -- Religious syncretism -- Literary form: structures and strictures -- Formulaic narrative in the Pure Land women's biographies -- Truncated narrative in the Chan women's biographies -- Some critical remarks -- Appendix I: two samples of Pure Land women's biographies -- Biography 114 Madam Li -- Biography 123 Madam Xu -- Appendix II: two samples of Chan women's biographies -- Biography 16 The Wandering Old Women Li -- Biography 21 The Old Woman Who Burned A Lodge -- Notes.

4 'All of Their Customs are Daughters of Their Religion': Baptists in Post-Revolutionary Mexico, 1920s-present -- Scholarship -- Protestant inroads in Oaxaca -- Convención Bautista Nacional de México in Tlacochahuaya -- La Unión Femenil and the new chapel -- Protestantism and violence -- Memory and martyrdom -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 5 Creating the 'Problem Hindu': Sati, Thuggee and Female Infanticide in India, 1800-60 -- 'Of What Concerns Women': Hindu femininity and victimhood -- 'Execrable pride and selfishness': Hindu masculinity and violence -- Conclusions -- Notes -- Part II Religion, Embodiment and Subjectivity -- 6 Engendering Purity and Impurity in Assyriological Studies: A Historiographical Overview -- Starting point: feminist epistemologies as a theoretical framework -- Gender studies and Assyriology: a relationship under construction -- Purity and impurity in Mesopotamia: defining terms -- Terminology of '(im)purity' in Assyriological studies: an assessment -- Women and bodily products: blood and menstruation -- A case study: (im)pure women in Mari -- To conclude: gendered bodies and (im)purity -- Notes -- 7 Lamentation Motifs in Medieval Hagiography -- Literary inheritance -- Tropes of maternal mourning -- Weeping -- Wailing -- Violent gesticulation -- Lamentation and the cult of saints -- Lament motifs in late medieval saints' lives -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 8 Architecture of Desire: Mediating the Female Gaze in the Medieval English Anchorhold -- Mechanics of medieval sight -- The dangers of sight -- Redeeming sight -- Architecture of desire -- Notes -- 9 The Alluring Beauty of a Leonardesque Ideal: Masculinity and Spirituality in Renaissance Milan -- Youthful male beauty in Christian thought -- Masculine beauty and Neoplatonism in Renaissance Milan -- Youthful beauty in Leonardo's thought -- Image and viewer -- The issue of sexuality.

Composite beauty and Leonardesque androgyny -- Notes -- 10 'Deaf to the Word': Gender, Deafness and Protestantism in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland -- Deaf 'heathens': the problem of the 'deaf and dumb' -- Impious and impure: gendering irreligion -- The deaf-mute's faith -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Part III Religion, Gender and Sexuality -- 11 The Sexual Shame of the Chaste: 'Abortion Miracles' in Early Medieval Saints' Lives -- Early Irish hagiography -- The Brigidine vitae -- The vitae of Áed and Cainnech -- The vita of Ciarán of Saigir -- Complications: making the text disappear -- The miraculous in the motif: gender and chastity -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 12 'Give Me Chastity': Masculinity and Attitudes to Chastity and Celibacy in the Middle Ages -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 13 Common Soldiers, Same-Sex Love and Religion in the Early Eighteenth-Century British Army -- The autobiography of Sampson Staniforth -- Military attitudes to sexuality and masculinity -- Masculinity, religion and 'the unpardonable sin' -- Methodism and Staniforth's story -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 14 'Dark Ecstasies': Sex, Mysticism and Psychology in Early Twentieth-Century England -- Notes -- 15 Made Flesh? Gender and Doctrine in Religious Violence in Twentieth-Century Spain -- Notes -- Part IV Gender, Religion and Political Activity -- 16 Conversion Trouble: The Alawis of Hadhramawt, Empire, Gender and the Problem of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century South India -- Sovereignty's global history -- Global expansions, gender and religion -- Resisting feudal futures -- Immodest proposals: sovereignty, women's rights and the problem of conversion -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 17 'Fatherland, Religion, Family': Exploring the History of a Slogan in Greece, 1880-1930 -- Notes -- 18 The More Things Change: Debating Gender and Religion in India's Hindu Laws, 1920-2006.

The early 1920s debates: British, colonial, civilising -- Debates of the 1940s and 1950s: moment of transition -- The 2006 debates: Indian, postcolonial, modernising -- Conclusion -- Notes -- INDEX.