Description: This volume engages women's lifeworlds, practices, and experiences in relation to Orthodox Christianity in multiple, varied localities, discussing both contemporary and pre-1989 developments. It critically engages the pluralist and changing character of Orthodox forms of institutional and social life in relation to gender by using feminist epistemologies and drawing on original ethnographic research.
Brief description: Milica Bakic-Hayden is Lecturer Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, where she has taught for the past twenty-five years, first at the Slavic Department and from 1997 to 2018 at the Department of Religious Studies. She obtained her BA and MA degrees from the University of Belgrade and her PhD from the University of Chicago. Geographic areas of academic interest include the Balkans and South Asia. Special topics of study and research include Indian religions, the philosophy and theory of art, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Balkan cultures and society, comparative mysticism, monasticism, and sainthood.
Review Quotes: This innovative collection of essays offers fresh and much needed perspectives on Orthodox worlds as experienced by women. These ethnographies not only bring us into the lived religious experiences of Orthodox women but show how they are animated by broader dynamics of political theology and neoliberalism. A must read for anyone interested in Orthodoxy today.---Catherine Wanner, Pennsylvania State University