Session 1: Women, Gender, and Freedom: Texts to Contemporary Contexts

This interdisciplinary panel investigates the evolving conceptions of women, gender, and freedom through literary, philosophical, and performative traditions across four major Dharma traditions: Jainism, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The selected papers draw from a rich archive of premodern and early modern texts, artistic representations, devotional narratives, and vernacular poetics to interrogate the layered and context-dependent meanings of gendered agency and religious identity. The panel asks: How have Dharma traditions historically framed questions of gender and freedom? In what ways do women-centered narratives offer models for ethical, emotional, or spiritual liberation? And how do these frameworks respond to or complicate contemporary understandings of self, body, and community? In sum, this panel seeks to meaningfully engage ongoing scholarly conversations on gender and freedom by centering the roles, voices, and interpretive agency of women within diverse Dharma traditions. Through a comparative lens, the panel not only facilitates interreligious dialogue but also invites a critical reexamination of received narratives concerning freedom, ethics, and spiritual authority. By bringing Jain, Sikh, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions into sustained conversation, this panel offers new insights into the historically situated and evolving expressions of gendered religiosity.