Re-staging the Periphery as the Center: Women Communities in East Asian Religions

Dear Colleagues,

In East Asian traditions, women have always been active participants in religious affairs. However, their stories tend to be excluded from the standard historical narrative to consolidate the social norm of inner–outer distinction. Such a narrative chooses not to position women on the central stage of the outer, public domain as their male counterparts, but rather push women to the periphery as secluded members of the inner quarters for their religious cultivation. Recent scholarship has substantially problematized this exclusive narrative. In the burgeoning field that intersects gender and religion, scholars of Chinese history have scrutinized the (often biased) gendered historical representation of women to underscore their subjectivities (Jia, Kang and Yao 2014; Kang 2017; Yao 2021). Indeed, Chinese women not only participated in the Buddhist modernist movement during the 20th century (Travagnin 2017; DeVido [forthcoming 2024]), but also played central roles in the post-Mao religious revitalization (Qin 2000; Sun 2014). In parallel, as shown in the research of Japanese religions, women collaborated to refashion female monasticism, as epitomized by the effort of a group of privately professed women to reinstall the nun’s ordination order in Hokkeiji (Meeks 2010), and the multiple roles of Shin Buddhist temple wives who were not only good wives and wise mothers but also supported priests (Starling 2013). Likewise, studies on the forgotten lineages of Buddhist women in Korea have prompted scholars to reconnect the thriving nun communities in contemporary South Korea with their historical legacy (Cho 2011).

Restaging the periphery as the center, this Special Issue aims to investigate how women in East Asian religions throughout history have harnessed various resources to carve a space for their communities and thus reshape the religious landscape in their societies. In particular, this issue enriches the current discussions on the structure of religious organization, community activities/rituals and networks initiated and maintained by women groups. How are the migration patterns, religious practices, community networks, and kinship resources of East Asian religious women similar or different? Can we put them in dialogue with each other? Are there feminist traits in their history that would be helpful for us to forge regional or transnational connections? A comparative approach to studying religious women in East Asia and in the East Asia cultural sphere (such as countries of Southeast Asia that received significant influence from East Asia) would highlight the interconnectivity of the region and reveals patterns of how gender history and religious history intersect, collide and inter-penetrate. 

Thereby, we invite empirical and theoretical contributions on women’s roles, identities, and communities in a broad range of East Asian religious traditions, lay or monastic, institutional or non-institutional based, communal or voluntary. Therefore, religious traditions involved include not only the more institutionalized forms of religions such as Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Shinto, but also popular/folk/sectarian religions, NRM, smaller-scale village religious communities, voluntary organizations, impromptu religious gatherings, ancestor worship, etc. We look at both the localized forms of female religious communities, and also the transnational movement of religious sisterhoods (e.g., Bhikkhuni movements or regional migration of vegetarian nuns). Particularly welcomed are papers with a focus on:

• Ethnographies of women’s religious communities (lay or monastic);
• Female religious lineages, doctrines, networks;
• Female alchemy in Daoist tradition;
• Histories of female temples and other religious spaces;
• Women’s religious communities and material culture (devotional or liturgical objects, images, sacred space, etc.);
• Women’s religio-kinship networks;
• Local, regional and transnational religious sisterhoods
• Women’s communal religious life, activities, rituals;
• Social life of religious women (i.e., religious women as entrepreneurs, political activists);
• Domestic life of religious women (i.e., re-centering the family, the household of women, re-enacting kitchen as ritual space);
• Religious food practices (vegetarianism, culinary piety);
• Biographies of Bhikkhunis, priestesses, female religious practitioners, performers, Chinese vegetarian nuns (zhaigu), etc.;
• Textual traditions of female religious communities, and the reception of female-centered texts;
• Interfaith dialogues;
• Lay Buddhism/Household Buddhism, lay religiosity;
• Gender empowerment, gender equality, religious egalitarianism.

Interested authors please submit an expression of interest (with proposed title, abstract of 300 words and a short biography) to the guest editors Dr Ying Ruo Show ([email protected]) and Dr Jingjing Li ([email protected]) by 30 June 2022. Full length articles of about 8000 words including references are due by 31 December 2022. All papers are subject to double-blind peer review.

Reference:

Cho, Eun-su ed. 2011. Korean Buddhist Nuns and Laywomen: Hidden Histories, Enduring Vitality. Albany: SUNY Press.

DeVido, Elise A. Forthcoming 2024. Women, Buddhism, and Modernity in China, 1900-1950. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.

Kang Xiaofei. 2017. “Women, Gender and Religion in Modern China, 1900s-1950s: An Introduction.” NAN NÜ 19(1): 1-27.

Meek, Lori R. 2010. Hokkeiji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Qin, Wen-jie. 2000. “The Buddhist Revival in Post-Mao China: Women Reconstruct Buddhism in Mt. Emei.” PhD Dissertation, Harvard University.

Starling, Jessica. 2013. “Neither Nun nor Laywoman: The Good Wives and Wise Mothers of Jōdo Shinshū Temples.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 40(2): 277-301.

Sun, Yanfei. 2014. “Popular Religions in Zhejiang: Feminization, Bifurcation and Buddhification.” Modern China 40(5): 455-487.

Travagnin, Stefania. 2017. “Buddhist Education Between Tradition, Modernity and Networks: Reconsidering the ‘Revival’ of Education for the Sangha in Twentieth Century China.” Studies in Chinese Religions 3(3): 220-241.

Yao, Ping. 2021. Women, Gender and Sexuality in China: A Brief History. London: Routledge.

Dr. Ying Ruo Show
Dr. Jingjing Li
Guest Editors

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• East Asian religions
• women’s communities
• feminism
• Bhikkhuni
• female alchemy
• religious sisterhoods
• gendered religious networks