Anna-Katharina Höpflinger

Introduction: Linking Gender and Religion

These verses are part of a song entitled “Burka Blue” that was produced in October 2002 during a German music workshop at the “Institute of Learning Music” in Kabul, Afghanistan. The workshop’s initiator was the Germanmusic label ata tak, which released a CD with the title “Burka Blue” in 2004.2 The song, and especially the corresponding music video on YouTube, became—at least in German-speaking countries—one of the media events of the year 2003 and was transmitted by the German TV Program SAT 1.3 The video clip features three figures wearing long blue burqas, playing drums and electric and bass guitars and posing on a hill in front of Kabul. The quoted lyrics provide a good illustration of some of the main topics of this special issue. Playing with the visibility of the burqa as well as its covering and concealing character, they question the gendered stereotypes constructed through this sort

Second Skin: Körper, Kleidung, Religion

Aktuelle offentliche, mediale und politische Debatten fokussieren auf Korper und Kleidung im Zusammenhang mit Religion. »Second Skin« bietet anhand der Kategorien Identitat, Reprasentation, Produktion und Rezeption sowie Regulierung einen kulturwissenschaftlichen Zugang zu Kleidung, Korper und Religion. Ausgehend von einem Konzept des Korpers als prozessuale, identitatsstiftende Grundlage der Person uber die Analyse von Praktiken und Reprasentationen von Korper und Kleidung bis hin zur Analyse offentlicher Machtdiskurse und Selbstregulierungen tragen in diesem Band Forschende aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen zu einer religionstheoretischen Erfassung von Kleidung bei.

Staging the Dead

The body is one of the basic media that form and communicate gender. How important gender is for the perception of an individual becomes especially clear by looking at the exhibition of a dead body. Having nothing left other than the body, the deceased are reduced to characteristics that seem to be the basis of a specific culture. However, in religious contexts the exhibition of mortal remains can also be used to overcome gender differentiations. In this article, I will focus on Central Europe, and argue that material presentations are an authoritative means of forming concepts of gender and religion.

Utopias: A Brief History from Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities, by Howard P. Segal, Wiley-Blackwell: West Sussex, 2012, 290 pp. ISBN 978-1-405-18328-4, US

troversy about Muhammad’s prophethood. Finally, chapter 11 deals with the archetypical example of philosophical and scientific translations of Classical material into Arabic and Latin, in a very general way. This volume aims at general and scholarly audience but has omitted footnotes, substituting them for a selected bibliography divided by chapter, which in my view is not enough. The reader often has to guess which source or monograph contains a certain version of facts, or what author has argued a certain line of thought, without referring at least to the final bibliography. It may be valuable for students of interfaith relations coming from the US and the English academic world, but it is less interesting for the rest of the European public, less familiar with current academic debates in the English-speaking area, and well beyond some of the theories and questions addressed in the second part of the book.

35.95 (paperback)

Clothing can be connected with various meanings and functions: we wear clothes to protect, construct, and form our body, as well as to communicate.1 This communication proceeds in the sense of a “viscourse”—a discourse through visual codes.2 A vestimentary viscourse forms part of sociocultural actions and complex identification processes. Nowadays, such a communication-theoretical approach to clothing is broadly accepted in apparel research, as Fred Davis already affirmed back in 1985: “That the clothes we wear make a statement is itself a statement that […] has virtually become a cliche.”3 Following Malcolm Barnard, I define clothing as a complex communication system that embraces the whole of human appearance.4 Clothing is interlinked with fundamental mechanisms of orientation in social networks. Human apparel is coupled with processes that allow agents to navigate their way through social interactions and include, for example, the rapport of gender, differing categories of age and social status, as well as varying ideas of beauty.5 Besides the social construction of meaning on the level of a viscourse, clothing invariably contains a spatial element as well.6 The human figure moves through space in clothing and thereby interacts with it.7 But the category of space also plays a significant role in constructing the body itself,8 as well as social and religious differences and hierarchies indicated through the spatial aspects of clothing, as I will endeavor to show in this chapter.

Clothing as a Meaningful Marker of Space. A Comparative Approach to Embodied Religion from a Cultural Studies Perspective

Was haben Science-Fiction-Filme mit Religion und Gender zu tun? Und welche Vorteile bringt der Film als Vermittlungsinstrument in der Lehre mit sich? Zwei Religionswissenschaftlerinnen berichten von ihrer Lehrerfahrung in einem Blockseminar in Frankfurt am Main.

Galaxien, die nie ein Mensch zuvor gesehen hat: Film in der religionswissenschaftlichen Lehre

Among the presents for my last birthday was an oil painting of Joan of Arc in armour (Figure 1). When I expressed my appreciation of the image, I elicited astonishment: “Joan of Arc? Is this not a knight?” Why did I interpret the portrayal as the one of Joan of Arc? Two aspects led to that assumption, aspects I was familiar with from other depictions showing Joan in a similar way. One indication is the combination of wearing armor while revealing feminine facial features, further supported by the French lilies on the tabard (Figure 2). The other clue is the specific staging: I read the posture as a pose of praying, the right hand upholding the flag, the left one placed on the heart. Thus, my interpretation is indebted to the categories of “clothing” and “religion.” Joan of Arc is assumed to have been born in 1412 in the French Domrémy-laPucelle. She died on May 30, 1431 in Rouen, accused of heresy, and thus was burned at the stake. However, such historical facts are not the main reason for choosing her as an example for introducing the topic of clothing and religion. Rather, it is the complex reception process around Joan and the significant role of clothing and religion therewith. Already in her lifetime, the historical figure of Joan was subject to idealization (Müller 2004: 11); later, she was prayed to as a saint, celebrated as a French national heroine, labeled as an early feminist figure, or critically scrutinized. Many sources state the tight relationship with a religious tradition, at least since the canonization of Joan by Pope Benedict XV in 1920. Joan is also seen as the ideal image of a woman in weaponry and men’s clothing. Already in 1431, cross dressing played an important role in the court proceedings against her, which took place from March 26 to May 24. In article 13 of the “ordinary trial” it is stated: “Casting aside all feminine modesty [. . .] she enjoyed all the ornamentation and attire of the most dissipated men, and even carried weapons of attack” (Hobbins 2005: 130). The court documents state the reproach Joan elicited when dressing the way she did; she was thus accused of trespassing the rules of gender conduct expressed in visual signs that society

“She even carried weapons” clothing, religion and identity

Among the presents for my last birthday was an oil painting of Joan of Arc in armour (Figure 1). When I expressed my appreciation of the image, I elicited astonishment: “Joan of Arc? Is this not a knight?” Why did I interpret the portrayal as the one of Joan of Arc? Two aspects led to that assumption, aspects I was familiar with from other depictions showing Joan in a similar way. One indication is the combination of wearing armor while revealing feminine facial features, further supported by the French lilies on the tabard (Figure 2). The other clue is the specific staging: I read the posture as a pose of praying, the right hand upholding the flag, the left one placed on the heart. Thus, my interpretation is indebted to the categories of “clothing” and “religion.” Joan of Arc is assumed to have been born in 1412 in the French Domrémy-laPucelle. She died on May 30, 1431 in Rouen, accused of heresy, and thus was burned at the stake. However, such historical facts are not the main reason for choosing her as an example for introducing the topic of clothing and religion. Rather, it is the complex reception process around Joan and the significant role of clothing and religion therewith. Already in her lifetime, the historical figure of Joan was subject to idealization (Müller 2004: 11); later, she was prayed to as a saint, celebrated as a French national heroine, labeled as an early feminist figure, or critically scrutinized. Many sources state the tight relationship with a religious tradition, at least since the canonization of Joan by Pope Benedict XV in 1920. Joan is also seen as the ideal image of a woman in weaponry and men’s clothing. Already in 1431, cross dressing played an important role in the court proceedings against her, which took place from March 26 to May 24. In article 13 of the “ordinary trial” it is stated: “Casting aside all feminine modesty [. . .] she enjoyed all the ornamentation and attire of the most dissipated men, and even carried weapons of attack” (Hobbins 2005: 130). The court documents state the reproach Joan elicited when dressing the way she did; she was thus accused of trespassing the rules of gender conduct expressed in visual signs that society

She Even Carried Weapons

Among the presents for my last birthday was an oil painting of Joan of Arc in armour (Figure 1). When I expressed my appreciation of the image, I elicited astonishment: “Joan of Arc? Is this not a knight?” Why did I interpret the portrayal as the one of Joan of Arc? Two aspects led to that assumption, aspects I was familiar with from other depictions showing Joan in a similar way. One indication is the combination of wearing armor while revealing feminine facial features, further supported by the French lilies on the tabard (Figure 2). The other clue is the specific staging: I read the posture as a pose of praying, the right hand upholding the flag, the left one placed on the heart. Thus, my interpretation is indebted to the categories of “clothing” and “religion.” Joan of Arc is assumed to have been born in 1412 in the French Domrémy-laPucelle. She died on May 30, 1431 in Rouen, accused of heresy, and thus was burned at the stake. However, such historical facts are not the main reason for choosing her as an example for introducing the topic of clothing and religion. Rather, it is the complex reception process around Joan and the significant role of clothing and religion therewith. Already in her lifetime, the historical figure of Joan was subject to idealization (Müller 2004: 11); later, she was prayed to as a saint, celebrated as a French national heroine, labeled as an early feminist figure, or critically scrutinized. Many sources state the tight relationship with a religious tradition, at least since the canonization of Joan by Pope Benedict XV in 1920. Joan is also seen as the ideal image of a woman in weaponry and men’s clothing. Already in 1431, cross dressing played an important role in the court proceedings against her, which took place from March 26 to May 24. In article 13 of the “ordinary trial” it is stated: “Casting aside all feminine modesty [. . .] she enjoyed all the ornamentation and attire of the most dissipated men, and even carried weapons of attack” (Hobbins 2005: 130). The court documents state the reproach Joan elicited when dressing the way she did; she was thus accused of trespassing the rules of gender conduct expressed in visual signs that society