French Feminists on Religion: A Reader

French Feminists on Religion: A Reader offers the first representative selection of important writings by French feminist thinkers on the topic of religion, including the most influential and provocative texts on the subject from Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Monique Wittig and Catherine Clément. Each thinker is introduced by a bibliographical preface, while individual essays are preceded by an editorial commentary explaining the context and significance of each piece for the study of religion.
The collected texts cover a broad range of religious practices and discourses focusing primarily on Jewish and Christian concerns, but including elements of ancient Goddess traditions, Witchcraft, Hinduism and Buddhism. Critically examined themes include:
* Jewish and Christian notions of sin, defilement, purity and redemption;
* the relationship between subjectivity and divinity, as conceived in the feminine;
* the feminist re-imaging of the Virgin Mary, and of Catholic theologies of love;
* the repression of the maternal in Judeo-Christian culture.
Brought together for the first time in French Feminist on Religion: A Reader, these essays demonstrate the central importance of French feminism for the study of religion, and at the same time make evident the significance of religious themes, figures and concepts to the world of French feminists.

Morny Joy is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary. She has edited numerous collections on women and religion and is currently writing a book on Luce Irigaray. Kathleen O'Grady is a Research Associate at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University, Montreal and is the editor of Bodies, Voices, Lives: Gender and Theology . Judith Poxon teaches at the University of Syracuse. She is a contributor to Routledge's Encyclopedia of Postmodernism and with Kathleen O'Grady, moderates the electronic discussion list on French feminist thought.