An interdisciplinary volume presenting a multicultural study of ancient and contemporary texts that explore the relationship between women and the sacred. Using modern critical methods such as feminist theory, poststructuralism, and the new historicisms, the contributors examine how the ideas in these texts are being reworked within and beyond different religious traditions. The roles, actions, writings, and beliefs of women in pre-Christian, Christian, Islamic, indigenous, and neo-pagan contenxts are considered. Building on three decades of feminist research, the contributions explore such areas as goddess worship, indigenous spiritualities, ecofeminism, biblical hermeneutics, Christian and Islamic mysticism, subversive poetics, and mythological systems of the mainstream and outside it.
