Review of Reading Spiritualities

The current issue (vol.23,no.3,Sept09) of Literature & Theology includes a review of the collection of papers edited by my supervisor, Deborah Sawyer, and fellow PhD candidate, Dawn Llewellyn, Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred.

Anna Fisk (University of Glasgow) writes that the editors' introduction is 'an excellent stand-alone map of where postmodern theological interpretation is situated today' (p.368).

She ends by commenting that,

'In her introduction to Is There a Future for Feminist Theology? Deborah Sawyer identifies feminist theology's tendency to work in a ghetto, separate from secular feminism and other branches of theology. Reading Spiritualities is a valuable example of resistance to that trend, asserting the continued relevance of doing theology with a political edge, yet without staying boxed in a room of one's own' (p.370).

But, more importantly, here's the bit about me:

'Katharine Sarah Moody examines the blogs of the 'emerging church' movement as an example of the wish to move from being 'passive consumers' to 'active creators' amongst Christians influenced by postmodernity. One major insight of Moody's study is that the censorship of readers' comments, and the hierarchy of credibility that exists amongst blogs and bloggers, may herald the return of textual 'authority over' in a new guise' (p.369).

Joking aside, Dawn did an especially great job not only being the primary organiser of the international conference from which these papers stemmed, but also putting together the collection and doing such a stirling editing job! Yay for Dawn!!!

Panel Review (2009)

So my fourth year panel review went fine. My panel consisted of my supervisor, Deborah Sawyer, and two colleagues from the Department, Shuruq Naguib and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad. I've not had them on my panel before so was keen to hear what they made of my project documents (including a one page summary of my thesis [here] and an annotated plan [see here for current thesis structure]).

Ram was eager to help me avoid over-engineering my thesis, basically helping me see that I've got internal reasons (i.e. in the interviews) for the theorists that I need to use, so that I don't have to use everyone!!! It's always helpful to hear you can do less than you've been thinking you need to. So it was good to hear the message of less is more!

As I didn't hand in a sample of writing that showed how I would integrate theory and empirical data, Ram was concerned that I not give the impression of over-interpreting what participants are saying, but just to let them speak for themselves. This won't be a problem, as my work inter-weaves theory and data well, I think. It's just I couldn't show Ram that, and he wanted to just make sure. He talked about how it was okay to both a) let the data say it plainly and b) say I am usefully interpreting the data as saying it. Shuruq also asked some interesting questions about the relationship between the data from my participants and my argument, in terms of how I am using my data, and what my relationship is to my participants.

Shuruq was worried that my initial contextualization of the empirical data in the UK gets lost throughout the rest of the structure. I'm not sure what to think about this yet. I need a "what is the emerging church?" section as it is not a widely known phenomenon within academia, but this question is not my research question; just the context in which I ask my questions. But I don't think I am losing that context throughout the rest of the thesis because I am continually coming back to the fact that participants are engaging the postmodern turn culturally and philosophically.

I think she was more concerned about the gender imbalance in both my use of (largley male) theorists and (largley male) participants; but this isn't something that I haven't noticed or plan to ignore! As she didn't know that my MA work had been in Women and Religion, I think she just wanted to make sure that I would mention the implications of this imbalance as and when they arose (which I have and will continue to). But, as Ram pointed out, my thesis isn't on gender.

All good food for thought. I'm sure I'll be posting again shortly with an altered thesis structure and abstract to reflect my thinking after this review.

Christianity, Gender Roles, and Wife Swapping

My post for Jason Clark's blog is now up, "Christianity, Gender Roles, and Wife Swapping."

It reflects upon a recent episode of Channel Four's "Wife Swap," connecting my interests in contemporary culture and the social construction of gender and gender roles. It also draws upon my research among lesbian Christians which explores the construction of selfhood in a religion which encourages selflessness.