Gender, Intermediality, Confession—Religious Gender Norms Revisited

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to the Special Issue “Gender, Intermediality, Confession—Religious Gender Norms Revisited”. Religious traditions and confessional cultures have profoundly shaped conceptions of gender, body, sexuality, and desire across history and into the present (cf., for example, Bauer/Mettner 2025). They define, regulate, and legitimize social norms while simultaneously opening spaces for resistance, transformation, and subversion (cf. LaFleur/Raskolnikov/Kłosowska 2021). Gender discourses in religious contexts are therefore never purely theological or moral negotiations; they are always mediated through aesthetic and cultural practices. Gendered meanings are produced, transmitted, and contested through texts, images, music, ritual performances, and, increasingly, through digital media environments.

In recent years, scholarship in gender studies, theology, religious studies, media studies, and cultural history has increasingly emphasized the importance of intermedial and intersectional approaches to understand the dynamics of religious norm formation (cf. Lenhart/Fliege 2020, Hecht/Ziegler 2023, and Krüger/Bär/Benga 2025). At the same time, renewed attention has been paid to the plurality of confessional traditions and their specific constructions of gender and embodiment. Yet many questions concerning the interplay of gender, confession, and media remain insufficiently explored.

This Special Issue, “Gender, Intermediality, Confession—Religious Gender Norms Revisited”, seeks to critically revisit established interpretative paradigms and to foster dialogue between historical research and contemporary theoretical perspectives. It invites contributions that examine how religious gender norms are constituted, mediated, negotiated, destabilized, and transformed across different confessional and cultural contexts.

This Special Issue aims to investigate the interrelations between gender constructions, intermedial representation, and confessional cultures in religious contexts. Particular attention will be given to the ways in which religious gender norms are communicated through different media forms and how they are shaped by specific theological, aesthetic, and cultural traditions. The Issue is closely aligned with the journal’s scope as it combines perspectives from religious studies, theology, gender studies, media studies, cultural studies, history, and literary studies. Through interdisciplinary approaches, it explores how religious identities and gendered bodies are represented, performed, and negotiated within diverse confessional settings, both historically and in contemporary contexts.

The Special Issue further aims to contribute to current debates on intermediality, embodiment, performativity, and intersectionality by examining how media practices influence the perception and construction of gender in religious discourse.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. The research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Gender constructions and body politics in religious traditions;
• Intermedial representations of gender in religious texts, images, music, ritual, and digital media;
• Confessional differences in concepts of gender, sexuality, and embodiment;
• Religious aesthetics and the performativity of gender;
• Intersections of religion, gender, race, class, and sexuality;
• Historical transformations of religious gender norms;
• Interconfessional and interreligious exchanges and transfers of gender roles;
• Media and material culture in the production of religious identities;
• Digital religion, online rituals, and contemporary gender discourses in social media contexts;
• Subversion, resistance, and alternative gender models in religious contexts;
• Theological narratives and symbolic practices related to the body and sexuality.

We hope that this Special Issue will stimulate new research to advance the interdisciplinary scholarship on religion and gender by foregrounding the importance of intermedial and confessional perspectives in the analysis of religious normativity. By bringing together contributions from different disciplinary and methodological backgrounds, the Issue aims to deepen our understanding of how gender norms are historically produced, culturally mediated, and continuously renegotiated within religious contexts.

The volume intends to stimulate new theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of religion and gender while encouraging comparative and transcultural perspectives. It further aims to contribute to contemporary debates on embodiment, identity, media, and power by highlighting the continuing relevance of religious traditions in shaping gendered experiences and imaginaries.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send this to the Guest Editor Prof. Martina Bär (martina.baer@uni-graz.at), or to the Assistant Editor Dr. Ana Vujkovic Sakanovic (vujkovic.sakanovic@mdpi.com) of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors to ensure manuscripts’ proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References:

Bauer, Benedikt, and Jennifer Mettner, eds. 2025. Verstaubt, verdrängt, vergessen? „Frau“ und „Geschlecht“ in der Kirchengeschichte. TeiResias. Transdisziplinäre Forschungen zu Gender und Religion, Bd. 2. Göttingen: V&R.

Fliege, Daniel, and Janne Lenhart, eds. 2020. Gender interkonfessionell gedacht. Konzeptionen von Geschlechtlichkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit. The Early Modern World, 3. Göttingen: V&R.

Hecht, Lisa, and Hendrik Ziegler, eds. 2023. Queerness in der Kunst der Frühen Neuzeit? Vienna/Cologne: Böhlau.

Krüger, Malte, Martina Bär, and Daniel Benga, eds. 2025. Iconic Turn in den christlichen Konfessionen: Erkundungen und Perspektiven. Paderborn: Brill.

LaFleur, Greta, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna Kłosowska, eds. 2021. Trans Historical: Gender Plurality before the Modern. New York: Cornell University Press.

Prof. Dr. Martina Bär
Dr. Benedikt Bauer
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• gender norms
• intermediality
• confession
• religious studies
• embodiment
• media and religion
• gender performativity
• theology and gender
• religious aesthetics
• intersectionality