Max Weber Lecture by Joan Wallach Scott, 15 May 2013, 17.00, Villa La Fonte

 “Woman and Religion”

Abstract:

This paper explores the connections made between religion and women by French secularizers in the 19th century as a way of understanding the effects of what Max Weber called “disenchantment.” It asks how differences of sex figured in anti-clerical writings (particularly those of Jules Michelet). And it argues that the conflation of women and religion, an aspect of their simultaneous privatization and their designation as “irrational,” helped secure the place of the difference of sex as the ontological ground for political and social organization in the nations of the West from the 17th century onwards.

About the Speaker:

Prof. Scott is Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science. Her ground breaking work has challenged the foundations of conventional historical practice, including the nature of historical evidence and historical experinece and the role of narrative in the writing of history. Broadly, the object of her work is the question of difference in history: its uses, enunciations, implemntations, justifications, and transformations in the construction of social and political life. Scott’s recent books include “Gender and the Politics of History “(1988), “Only Paradocs to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man” (1996), “Parite’: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism” (2005), and “The Politics of the Veil” (2007).

All welcome to attend, please register: Susan Garvin.