Descriptions, Reviews, etc.
Description:
Anna Fedele offers a comprehensive ethnography of alternative pilgrimages to French Catholic shrines dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene.
Review Quotes: "Over the course of the book [Fedele] provides a sophisticated account of the re-imagination of sacred sites and the elaboration of new rituals to enact and embody the pilgrims' developing ideas about feminine spirituality."
--Journal of Anthropological Research
"Fedele brilliantly explores the pilgrims ritual creativity....Fedele also succeeds at bringing her subjects close to the reader. She handles evidence from interviews with a light touch, so that pilgrims' voices appear clear and uncompromised." --
Marginalia"In this theoretically nuanced and ethnographically rich study, Anna Fedele carefully lays out the complex and imaginative worlds of Mary Magdalene's contemporary spiritual pilgrims and their sacred landscapes of European forests, waters, caves, and rocks imbued with symbol and meaning. Immersing herself in their created ceremonies, she reports back to us with sensitivity and insight about their reinterpretations of gender, sexuality, community, and religion."--Sarah M. Pike, author of
Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community"This is a rich, thoughtful, and quite startling account of the new spirituality around Mary Magdalene, and around menstruation, darkness and the creativity of loss."--Tanya Luhrmann, Watkins University Professor, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University
