| Submitted to Program Units |
|---|
| 1: Chinese Religions Unit |
| 2: Teaching Religion Unit |
This roundtable gathers together some of the contributors to a forthcoming sourcebook intended for university classroom use, tentatively titled Teaching Women in Chinese Religions. This anthology of translated texts, and thus this roundtable, is designed to follow life-cycle rites from birth through death, focusing especially on the role of religious practices in creating or deconstructing normative female identities and bodies. The participants have each contributed translations which focus on different roles in a woman’s life, starting from childhood and ending with funeral rites, including girls, daughters, wives, mothers, non-mothers (nuns and shamans), and widows. Taken together, these translated texts can be used a lens for examining the ways in which Chinese religious rituals and practices produce, reinforce, or challenge gender norms at different ages and for different social roles.
At the same time as the texts selected for inclusion in this sourcebook take women’s lives and identities as their primary focus, the compilers are careful to consider points of divergence in women’s lives revealed in these works, such as the possibility of marriage or the possibility of becoming a renunciant (usually a Buddhist or Daoist nun). Additionally, as the sources discussing household and domestic roles for girls and women (or outside the home, in the case of renunciants) were mostly written by male authors, they are careful to draw attention to how male authors created these roles. Consequently, in considering how texts produce girls’ and women’s roles, they also address, in the critical introduction to the entire work, how those same texts produce boys’ and men’s roles, whether explicitly or implicitly. This allows the anthology to attend to the full spectrum of gender, rather than treating girls and women as the only people with gender.
This roundtable aims to introduce this sourcebook to an audience who may wish to use this work in their teaching, either in whole or in part, as well as give the audience a critical framework that can be used to introduce it to students. In the discussion, the presider will ask participants to speak about how their contributions to the sourcebook individually give readers the opportunity to work with significant primary source materials that have, until now, been unavailable for classroom use in English-language education. Participants will also speak on how their work contributes to the major themes of the anthology, and highlight the diversity of religious frameworks and practices that shaped women’s lives in China.
The roundtable includes faculty with teaching experience at a range of institutional backgrounds, including private universities, large public universities, and small liberal arts colleges. Some are also from departments outside of religious studies. From their different perspectives on student interests, needs, and learning goals, they will also be asked to present on why this is an important resource, and how it may be used in teaching students from diverse backgrounds. Participants will also share questions that instructors might use to guide discussions on their translated works, and how these texts might be used to inspire student interest in reading further on these subjects.
Though currently a work in progress, by the time of the November 2024 meeting, Teaching Women in Chinese Religions will have been submitted to a publisher and but still open to revisions based on feedback received during this roundtable. Collaborators on the project have agreed to make affordability for students (including the option of open-access publication) a priority in selecting an appropriate publisher for their work. Some selected translations may also be partially published on a website dedicated to Women in the Study of Chinese Religions. Making these materials available for other scholars’ research and teaching will bring greater attention to issues of gender and ritual, as well as women’s ritual, in Chinese religious history. Participants hope to generate lively discussion with the audience, generating new ideas for how their work can serve as a teaching resource that addresses a critical gap in the diversity of texts available thus far for teaching about women’s religious lives in Chinese history and culture.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
In this roundtable, a group of scholars who have collaboratively compiled a sourcebook of new critical translations of works relating to women in Chinese religions will speak about their forthcoming work, its contribution to the field, and its applications in the university classroom. Tentatively titled Teaching Women in Chinese Religions, the work focuses on women’s life-stages and how religious practices and rituals shaped norms around female identity and bodies. With chapters on roles like daughter, wife, mother and non-mother (nuns and shamans), and life-stages like girlhood, marriage, and widowhood, the book contributes to filling a critical gap in the diversity of teachable texts about women’s religious lives in Chinese history and culture. The panel aims to introduce the themes of this work, give audience members practical approaches to using its contents in the classroom, and create a forum for open discussion of best practices for teaching religion, gender, and literature.