Productive Instability?: Investigating the Intersection Between Gender Transition and Religious Conversion
Publication information:
Collins, Nicole. 2023. “Productive Instability?: Investigating the Intersection Between Gender Transition and Religious Conversion.” in Uses and Abuses of Power in Alternative Spiritualities. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Abstract
Abstract: In this paper, I address the intersection of gender transition and religious conversion, a dynamic currently under-discussed in trans* religious studies. I examine Mariecke van den Berg’s essay “Embodying Transformation,” which highlights parallels between gender transition and religious conversion in looking at memoirs by Jewish trans women. Taking van den Berg’s work as a starting-point, my paper continues this line of questioning and attempts to take seriously what a deeper instability between gender and religious identity, and thus their intersection and simultaneity, might look like—and additionally what importance such a theorization holds for both trans* theory and for academic religious studies.
Presenter bio: Nicole Malte Collins is a Master of Theological Studies student at Harvard Divinity School, where she studies the intersection of transness and religious conversion.
Presenter affiliation: Harvard Divinity School
Presenter bio: Nicole Malte Collins is a Master of Theological Studies student at Harvard Divinity School, where she studies the intersection of transness and religious conversion.
Presenter affiliation: Harvard Divinity School