Challenging Cultures of Death: Mercy Not Sacrifice

© Institute for Feminism and Religion. All rights reserved.

Keynote Speakers

Ettinger, Bracha L.: Professor Ettinger is one of the most influential contemporary French psychoanalytical feminist theorists and an internationally renowned artist, painter and photographer whose paintings, photos, drawings and notebooks have been exhibited extensively in major museums of contemporary art, among them: Royal Museum of Fine Art, Antwerp ( Gorge(l) , 2006), KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki ( ARS 06 Biennale , 2006), Villa Medici, Rome, ( Memory , 1999), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam ( Kabinet , 1997), Pompidou Center ( Face à l'Histoire , 1997), with solo exhibitions in the Drawing Center , NY, 2001; The Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels (2000); Museum of Art , Pori (1996); The Israel Museum , Jerusalem (1995); the Museum Of Modern Art (MOMA) , Oxford; The Russian Museum , St. Petersbourg (1993); Le Nouveau Musée , Villeurbanne; (1992) and the Musée des Beaux-Arts , Calais (1988). Read More>>

Pollock, Griselda: Professor of the Social and Critical Histories of Art; Director of CentreCATH at Leeds; Co-Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies; Executive Member of Centre for Jewish Studies; Executive Member of Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies

Professor Griselda Pollock's main research interests are in the issues of gender, race and class in the formations of modernism in late nineteenth century Europe and America; the history of women in the visual arts with a current project focusing on femininity, representation and modernity 1928-1968; the work of Vincent van Gogh; women's cinema 1940-9; the legend of Tarzan: myths of empire, identity and place, contemporary visual arts by women. Her research areas include issues of trauma, history and memory after the Holocaust and Jewish Art and Modernity.

Primavesi, Anne : Born and educated in Ireland, and now based in England, Dr. Anne Primavesi, formerly Lecturer and Research Fellow in Environmental Theology at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol and Research Fellow at The Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion, Birkbeck, University of London, is currently Fellow of the Westar Institute, California and a Founding Research Fellow of the Lokahi Foundation, London.

Her published books include From Apocalypse to Genesis: Ecology, Feminism and Christianity (Burns and Oates and Fortress Press 1991); Sacred Gaia: Holistic Theology and Earth System Science (Routledge 2000), Gaia's Gift: Earth, Ourselves and God after Copernicus (Routledge 2003); Making God Laugh: Human Arrogance and Ecological Humility (Polebridge Press, 2004).

Among numerous articles, she contributed the entry “Theology and Earth System Science” in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing: Irish Women's Writing and Traditions , Vol. 1V, ( Cork University Press, 2002), pp 695-702. More recently she has contributed the entry on “Gaia” in Encyclopedia of Religion , Second Edition, eds. Lindsay Jones, et al.. Macmillan Reference, Vol. 5, pp 3253-3255 (New York, 2004); the entry on “Ecofeminist Theology” in Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity , ed. Daniel Patte, Cambridge University Press, (Cambridge and New York, 2006); the entry on “Ecology”in The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture , ed. John Sawyer, (Oxford, 2006), pp 432-446.

Published this year is “The Preoriginal Gift—and Our Response to It” in Ecospirit: Religion, Philosophy and the Earth, eds. Laurel Kearns and Catherine Keller, Fordham University Press, (New York, 2007), pp. 217-32, and “Can Gaia Forgive Us?” in Earthy Realism: The Meaning of Gaia , ed. Mary Midgley, Imprint Academic, ( Exeter , 2007), pp. 68-73.

Primavesi's Website http://www.westarinstitute.org/Fellows/Primavesi/primavesi.html

Sanday, Peggy Reeves: Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia , PA. She is one of the founders of the anthropology of sex and gender and author of several foundational books: Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality (l981) and Fraternity Gang Rape.

In 2002 she published a study of modern matriarchy based on her 20-year field research in the largest and most modern matrilineal society in the world today, the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, Indonesia. Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy critiques and revisions the Western definition of matriarchy based on Minangkabau meanings. Peggy Sanday has a wide knowledge of and deep respect for women's culture in many societies of the world.

Among her many publications are the following:

Anthropology and the Public Interest: Fieldwork and Theory. l976. New York : Academic Press.

Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality . l981. New York : Cambridge University Press. Translated into Spanish.

Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System. l986. New York : Cambridge University Press. Translated into Japanese. Translated into Chinese.

Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus . l990. New York . New York University Press.

Beyond the Second Sex . Edited book with Ruth Goodenough. l990. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press.

A Woman Scorned: Acquaintance Rape on Trial. l996. New York : Doubleday. Paperback Edition, University of California Press , l997.

Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy Cornell University Press, 2002. , (Paperback - Jan 2004)

Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus by Peggy Reeves Sanday (Paperback - Mar 1, 2007).

Aboriginal Paintings of the Wolfe Creek Crate: Track of the Rainbow Serpent by Peggy Reeves Sanday (Hardcover - April 30, 2007)

Sanday's Website
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~psanday/

Vaughan, Genevieve: Genevieve Vaughan works at the intersection of theory and practice through her theorization of the gift economy as a counter-discourse addressing patriarchy and global capitalism.

The gift economy is one in which goods are distributed to needs. The logic is based on "mothering" in which a relationship between giver and receiver is one in which the former responds to the needs of the latter. The transaction of giving and receiving creates bonds which can be seen as the basis of the circulation of goods in economies without markets as such. These gift transactions have been viewed through the market perspective as exchanges (do ut des); however, the maternal distribution of goods directly to needs can be seen as a foundational social principle which has been absorbed and co-opted by market exchange, but not eliminated. Read More>.