Format:hybrid (in person and online) Language: russian, english Mail:godisawoman.vectors@gmail.com Organizers: Ekaterina Astashova, 2nd-year Student, SAS UTMN (School of Advanced Studies, University of Tyumen), Applied Informatics: Data Technologies and Systems Analysis
Zlata Pikulo, 3rd-year Student, SAS UTMN (School of Advanced Studies, University of Tyumen), International Relations: International Interactions Under Uncertainty
Annotation
In a number of traditional religions, the female experience of faith and spiritual expression has been marginalized. An entire system of beliefs persists that diminishes the significance of the feminine principle in the sacred sphere: from ancient ritual restrictions, where a woman was considered "unclean" during menstruation and isolated from the community, to modern church prescriptions prohibiting her participation in worship or service at the altar.
Feminist theology is a philosophical-religious reflection that emerged in the 1960s in various religions as a movement within theology that re-examines the category of the "feminine" within the space of religion through the lens of gender deconstruction. Based on the theological critique of patriarchal paradigms, we ask: Can feminist theology be viewed as a space of ontological and epistemological shift, expressing a symptom of the fundamental conflict between the pseudo-universalist nature of monotheistic systems and the inherent plurality of human existence? And, in this case, does the category of the "feminine" acquire the status of a methodological principle for re-describing religious experience?
Feminist theology posits that traditional religious metaphysics was built upon a hierarchical binary: transcendent and immanent, spirit and body, masculine and feminine. This binarism, as Mary Daly showed in Beyond God the Father, is not only a social but also an ontological structure through which patriarchy becomes "the image of the divine Father in heaven... dominating the consciousness of millions for thousands of years." The work of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, in turn, revealed that the suppression of female figures and practices was a significant part of the process of canonizing early Christian texts. Amina Wadud (Qur'an and Woman) in the Islamic context also demonstrates that an initially symmetrical anthropology was present in the texts of the Quran, which were later used to justify patriarchal power. Thus, does religious thought form the gender order, or does it merely express it to some degree in symbolic language? What is primary: the theological model of gender differentiation or society's need to inscribe the mechanism of social order into sacred discourse?
The starting point of our investigation is the recognition that feminist theology is not limited to "women's theology." The central themes are the conflict between the pseudo-universalism of monotheism and the genuine plurality of human experience, examined within the discourse of feminist theology, and the problem of the very source of religious gender. Our task is to investigate how the critique of patriarchal binaries and the reconstruction of marginalized experience pave the way for a new hermeneutics of the sacred, in which the Divine is no longer conceived within the framework of absolute masculine dominance.
Daly, M. (1973). Beyond God the Father: Toward a philosophy of women’s liberation. Beacon Press.
Fiorenza, E. S. (1983). In memory of her: A feminist theological reconstruction of Christian origins. The Crossroad Publishing Company.
Gross, R. M. (1993). Buddhism after patriarchy: A feminist history, analysis, and reconstruction of Buddhism. State University of New York Press.
Irigaray, L. (1985). Speculum of the other woman (G. C. Gill, Trans.). Cornell University Press. (Оригинальная работа опубликована в 1974 г.)
Johnson, E. A. (1992). She who is: The mystery of God in feminist theological discourse. The Crossroad Publishing Company.
Wadud, A. (1999). Qur’an and woman: Rereading the sacred text from a woman’s perspective (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Main topics
Ontology and hermeneutics of gender in the sacred. What shapes religious gender: theology or society?
Feminist theology as a methodology for rethinking the hermeneutics of the sacred.
A femtheological critique of traditional theological discourses.
A phenomenology of women's religious and mystical experience.
Femtheology beyond "women's theology" – the male experience of femtheology pro et contra.
Gender archeology of the sacred – comparative studies.
Key speakers
Emile Alexandrov, Doctor of Philosophy, PhD from the University of Notre Dame (Australia), researcher of metaphysics, Greco-Arabic philosophy, and esoteric Buddhism; member of the editorial board of the Oriens Institute for Religious Research journal in Japan, and one of the organizers of the annual International Symposium on Buddhism and Neoplatonism.
Svetlana Ryazanova,Russian religious studies scholar, specialist in political mythology and contemporary religiosity; Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies and Philosophy at Perm State Institute of Culture (PGIK); member of the Eurasian Network for Political Studies and the Russian Society for the Study of Religion.
Oksana Kuropatkina,Russian religious studies scholar and translator, specialist in Protestantism. She also studies religious motifs in popular culture and the role of religion in society. Candidate of Sciences in Cultural Studies (2009), Doctor of Education (2024). One of the authors of the Great Russian Encyclopedia and the Orthodox Encyclopedia.
Olga Farkhitdinova,Candidate of Sciences in Philosophy, Associate Professor at the Department of Ontology and Theory of Knowledge (Religious Studies Section), Ural Federal University (UrFU).