A Roundtable on Birthing the Maternal Turn in Religious Studies: Experiences in Studying, Teaching, Researching, and Publishing

In this roundtable, participants at different stages of their careers and with different backgrounds and fields of specialization will share how they initiated a “maternal turn” in their studying, teaching, researching, and publishing on motherhood and religions. By emphasizing the “maternal turn” in religious studies and the emergence of a new subfield marked by matricentric feminism, we mean to address a triple-blind: religious traditions rarely consider the experience of mothers as central, scholars who study them tend to focus on feminine figures who are either goddesses or who are not mothers (saints, nuns, virgins, priestesses, etc.), and even those who study feminine agency in religions overlook the distinction between the institution of motherhood and the experience of mothering. Ample time will be given for a general discussion and Q&A with all attendees.