Darlene Juschka

The Category of Gender in the Study of Religion

This essay examines how gender has been delineated by feminists in a variety of fields, and studies how John Stratton Hawley and Ursula King incorporate the notion of gender in their titles and as a basis for their studies. The category of gender has become quite popular in the last two decades. The questions are why is it so popular and how useful is it? Gender as a category of analysis is one developed within a hegemonic discourse and therefore a dangerous category at best. By using gender rather than sex, sex remains an untheorized category that acts as the bedrock of gender. Feminism can be found in most if not all fields of study. Numerous female writers are discussed for their contributions to gender construction/deconstruction in the study of religion. Gender does not determine our bodies. We determine our bodies as gendered. Sex requires deconstruction and not reification. Keywords: feminism; gender; John Stratton Hawley; study of religion; Ursula King

Responding to intimate partner violence: challenges faced among service providers in northern communities

The current study examined the needs of women experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) in a profiled northern community in Saskatchewan, Canada. A focus group was conducted with eight knowledgeable and experienced service providers to gain an increased understanding of the needs of women IPV survivors in northern regions of Canada. The discussion was guided by the question of “What do you see as the needs of women coming through your services with regard to intimate partner violence?” Qualitative analyses highlighted important findings pertaining to the unique needs of women experiencing IPV and the challenges service providers face in northern regions. Suggestions for improvement among resources and services were discussed. The findings will enhance the ability of government representatives and community service providers to decipher the effectiveness of support services and resources for women living in geographically diverse areas.

Disney and fundamentalism: The fetishisation of the family and the production of American family values

The propensity to sanitise and order violence, uncertainty, political conflict, and difference is one of the trademarks of Disney ‘innocence’, an innocence felt to be appropriate for children to consume. The Disney focus and delineation of a particular kind of family—which Disney locates far back in the recesses of a human biological history—is used in order to support what has come to be known as ‘American family values’. This same model of the family is evinced in those religions that have been termed fundamentalist. This paper will examine and compare the fetishisation of the family found in Disneys animated productions (productions intended to be consumed by, and to consume, children) and fundamentalism. I hope to establish a reading of the texts that demonstrates what is at stake for the propagators of this mythic model of the family, and what is at stake for those who consume such a model.

A Web of Disheartenment With Hope on the Horizon: Intimate Partner Violence in Rural and Northern Communities

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has become a worldwide epidemic, yet little is known about the experiences of women survivors living in rural and Northern Canadian communities. Existing statistics suggest that women living in rural areas of the Canadian Prairie Provinces and Northwest Territories (NWT) are at a significantly higher risk of experiencing IPV. To better understand the experiences of IPV in these regions, qualitative interviews were conducted with service providers, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Victims Services, Shelter Services, counselors, and others (e.g., physicians). In total, 122 participants were interviewed. These interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory approach where the data/results were transformed into a pictorial matrix that documents the struggles that service providers endure. The matrix/results highlight how social issues, such as isolation and poverty, contribute to social oppressions, such as lack of resources, transportation, and/or services. As service providers struggle against these forces, they begin to develop feelings of disheartenment. Yet, they continue to fight because there are opposing forces, such as Emergency Intervention Orders, police transportation, and Victim Services, that demonstrate how societal response is improving the lives and increasing safety in rural and Northern communities. Ultimately, the results suggest that to reduce the incidences of IPV, we must go beyond the violent acts and deal with the social contexts in which IPV resides.

Enfleshing semiotics: The indexical and symbolic sign-functions

This essay engages the work of Robert Yelle in his text Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History. The author examines in particular his theorizing of the indexical sign function and its capacity to ‘enflesh’ the symbol. In the Peircean and Saussurean frames the symbol is an abstraction, a concept, and removed from the experiential. However, with the deployment of the indexical sign, as Yelle argues, the symbol is enfleshed and made experiential. Yelles development of Peircean semiotics should prove to be very productive in the study of systems of belief and practice.

Interdisciplinarity in Religious and Women's Studies

This paper examines how interdisciplinarity has been adopted by, and deployed in, the production of knowledge in the university as institution. I begin by outlining three subcategories of interdisciplinarity that determine its semantic boundaries, and then shift to examine interdisciplinary work in Womens and Religious Studies. Thereafter I speak to the impact interdisciplinarity has had on knowledge and knowledge production in the university.