Session proposal ESSHC

Zeit: 27.02-01.03.2008
Ort: Lisbon, Portugal
Deadline: 01.05.2007

Ariadne Schmidt and Karin Hofmeester plan to organise a session for the ESSHC 2008 (Lisbon 27 February-1 March) focussing on the question why women join radical religious movements that aim at changing the existing social order drastically. Nowadays, if we think about these radical religious movements we think of fundamentalist Muslims or American evangelical Protestants. These, apparently male-dominated, movements attract(ed) large numbers of women. This seems surprising at first sight. Why would women support a movement that restrict their roles in the public sphere and impose on them the traditional role of mothers and housekeepers?

Schmidt and Hofmeester would like to analyse the appeal of radical religious movements to women in a (long term) historical and global context. They welcome papers on radical religious movements from all historical periods and all geographic areas.

Papers should address (at least some of) the following questions:

Which women joined radical religious movements? What can we say about their background?
* What was their social-economic background?
* What was their educational level?
* Did they come from an urban or a rural environment?
* Did they have a religious background before they joined the movement?
* In what stage of life did they join the movement?

What did women gain by joining radical religious movements?
* Security in financial, economic or social respect?
* A way to cope with rapid social, economic, political and cultural changes in society?
* Opportunities they lacked outside the movement to play an active role in the public sphere, to activism and agency?
* A proud ideology, communal identity?
* Self-affirmation, self-identity ?
* Avoiding dilemmas of free choice regarding sexual questions?
* A revaluation of family values and the responsibilities of menin them?

Please send your suggestions for papers, including an abstract (100-500 words) to Ariadne Schmidt asc@iisg.nl and Karin Hofmeester kho@iisg.nl before May 1st.

CfP – Quelle: Newsletter des AKHFG Arbeitskreis Historische Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Universität Flensburg