Joanna de Groot & Sue Morgan 
Sex, Gender and the Sacred [PDF ebook] 
Reconfiguring Religion in Gender History

Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction: Beyond the ‘Religious Turn’? Past,
Present and Future Perspectives in Gender History 1
JOANNA DE GROOT AND SUE MORGAN
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 31
CAROLYN E. WATSON
2 Liberal Religion and the ‘Woman Question’ between
East and West: Perspectives from a Nineteenth-Century Bengali
Women’s Journal 51
CLARE MIDGLEY
3 Indeterminacy in Meaning: Religious Syncretism and Dynastic
Historiography in the Shann¨uren zhuan 67
YUET KEUNG LO
4 ‘All of Their Customs are Daughters of Their
Religion’: Baptists in Post-Revolutionary Mexico,
1920s-present 83
KATHLEEN M. Mc INTYRE
5 Creating the ‘Problem Hindu’: Sati, Thuggee and
Female Infanticide in India, 1800-60 104
DANIEL J. R. GREY
Part II: Religion, Embodiment and Subjectivity
6 Engendering Purity and Impurity in Assyriological Studies: A
Historiographical Overview 119
´ERICA COUTO-FERREIRA AND AGN`ES GARCIA-VENTURA
7 Lamentation Motifs in Medieval Hagiography 135
ANNE E. BAILEY
8 Architecture of Desire: Mediating the Female Gaze in the
Medieval English Anchorhold 150
MICHELLE M. SAUER
9 The Alluring Beauty of a Leonardesque Ideal: Masculinity and
Spirituality in Renaissance Milan 170
MAYA CORRY
10 ‘Deaf to the Word’: Gender, Deafness and
Protestantism in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland 195
ESME CLEALL
Part III: Religion, Gender and Sexuality
11 The Sexual Shame of the Chaste: ‘Abortion
Miracles’ in Early Medieval Saints’ Lives 211
ZUBIN MISTRY
12 ‘Give Me Chastity’: Masculinity and Attitudes to
Chastity and Celibacy in the Middle Ages 225
PAT CULLUM
13 Common Soldiers, Same-Sex Love and Religion in the Early
Eighteenth-Century British Army 241
SUSAN GANE
14 ‘Dark Ecstasies’: Sex, Mysticism and Psychology
in Early Twentieth-Century England 256
JOY DIXON
15 Made Flesh? Gender and Doctrine in Religious Violence in
Twentieth-Century Spain 272
MARY VINCENT
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
287
WILSON CHACKO JACOB
17 ‘Fatherland, Religion, Family’: Exploring the
History of a Slogan in Greece, 1880-1930 304
EFFI GAZI
18 The More Things Change: Debating Gender and Religion in
India’s Hindu Laws, 1920-2006 315
RINA VERMA WILLIAMS
Index 329

Joanna de Groot is Senior Lecturer in History at the
University of York and a member of the Centres for Eighteenth
Century Studies, Modern Studies and Women’s Studies.
Sue Morgan is Professor of Women’s and Gender
History at the University of Chichester, UK. She works on the
history of religion and gender and her most recent publications
include the co-edited volumes Women, Gender and Religious
Cultures: Britain, 1800-1940 (2010) with Jacqueline de Vries
and Men, Masculinities and Religious Change in Twentieth Century
Britain (2013) with Lucy Delap.