"William Byrd II was a prominent eighteenth-century Virginian who at the time of his death owned over 180,000 acres of land and employed laborers and enslaved Africans. This book examines a neglected stage in the formation of slavery in Virginia by analyzing the practices and beliefs of one of the more prominent slave owners of the period. Byrd was perhaps the early colonial definition of a patriarch, and author Dennis Todd here grounds the concept of patriarchalism in a series of concrete practices and expectations. Doing so, Todd argues that patriarchal principles, which are often assumed to have justified slavery and to have offered a template for slave management, in fact did neither"--

A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Negotiating Patriarchy and Gender in Africa: Discourses, Practices, and Policies examines the entrenchment of patriarchy in Africa and its attendant socioeconomic and political consequences on gender relations. The contributors analyze the historical and modern ways in which gender expectations have enabled women in African societies to be systematically abused and marginalized, from unpaid labor to poor representation in decision-making areas. Exploring regions such as rural Uganda, the suburbs of Zimbabwe, the Gold Coast, South Africa, and Nigeria, contributors incorporate a wide range of academic theories and disciplines to establish the need for improved policy implementation on gender issues at both the local and national government levels in Africa.

“A work of rare depth and profound insight that is destined to become a classic in African Studies and the anthropology of religion.” —Paul Stoller, author of Yaya’s Story: The Quest for Well-Being in the World Richard Werbner takes readers on a journey though contemporary charismatic wisdom divination in southern Africa. Beginning with the silent language of the divinatory lots, Werbner deciphers the everyday, metaphorical, and poetic language that is used to reveal their meaning. Through Werbner’s skillful interpretations of the language of divination, a picture of Tswapong moral imagination is revealed. Concerns about dignity and personal illumination, witchcraft, pollution, the anger of dead ancestors, as well as the nature of life, truth, cosmic harmony, being, and becoming emerge in this charged African setting. “Werbner’s Divination’s Grasp documents a long and distinguished career in the service of anthropology. It will be a touchstone for anthropological studies of divination for years to come.” —American Ethnologist “Richard Werbner’s superb account of moral imagination and the poetics of divination grasps the density of its subject, matching the insights of the diviner with those of the ethnographer. The book takes its place among the very best works of Africanist anthropology as a new classic in the tradition of ethnographic divination and a necessary reminder of live and deep traditions of African wisdom.” —Michael Lambek, University of Toronto Scarborough

This book examines the operational dynamics of patriarchy that is deeply woven into the Indian cultural fabric and its persistence in spite of women advancing in Human Development Indices. In studying the situation of women of the Catholic Syrian Christian community of Kerala, South India, as a case of analysis, Kochurani Abraham identifies caste consciousness and religious prescriptions of this community as the main factors that intersect with gendered identity construction and succeed in keeping women within its patriarchal confines. While women do engage in negotiating patriarchy through what can be termed simulative, tactical, and ‘agensic’ bargains, this remains a ‘politics of survival’ as it does not challenge the established gender order. In this context, making a shift from ‘politics of survival’ to a ‘politics of subversion’ is imperative for challenging persisting patriarchies.

Punishment, Prisons, and Patriarchy tells the story of how first-generation Americans coupled their legacy of liberty with a penal philosophy that promoted patriarchy, especially for marginal Americans. American patriots fought a revolution in the name of liberty. Their victory celebrations barely ended before leaders expressed fears that immigrants, African Americans, women, and the lower classes were prone to vice, disorder, and crime. This spurred a generation of penal reformers to promote successfully the most systematic institution ever devised for stripping people of liberty: the penitentiary. Today, Americans laud liberty but few citizens contest the legitimacy of federal, state, and local government authority to incarcerate 2 million people and subject another 4.7 million probationers and parolees to scrutiny, surveillance, and supervision. How did classical liberalism aid in the development of such expansive penal practices in the wake of the War of Independence?

One of the thorniest problems in theological study is the relationship between biblical studies on the one hand, and constructive theology on the other. Theologians know that the Bible is the core source document for theological construction, and hence that they must be in conversation with the best in critical study of Scripture. For many biblical scholars, the point of what they do is to help the biblical text speak to today’s church and world, and hence they would do well to be in conversation with contemporary theology. Yet too often the two groups fail to engage each other’s work in significant and productive ways. The purpose of the Library of Biblical Theology, and this introductory volume to it, is to bring the worlds of biblical scholarship and constructive theology together. It will do so by reviving biblical theology as a discipline that describes the faith of the biblical periods on the one hand, and on the other hand articulates normative understandings of modern faith and practice. In this volume the authors begin by providing an overview of the history and possible future of biblical theology. They introduce biblical theology as a fundamentally contrastive discipline, one that is neither dogmatic theology (seeking to explain the official teachings of a particular Christian tradition), nor is it a purely historical approach to Scripture, eschewing questions of the Bible’s contemporary message and meaning. Rather, biblical theology takes seriously both the need to understand the message of Scripture in its particular historical context, and the need to address that message to questions that confront contemporary human life.

Good Book?interrogates how white evangelical Christians in the US make the Bible the "Good Book." An inanimate object with a contested table of contents ripe for multiple meanings and uses, the Bible cannot be a moral agent on its own. People must make it so, as indeed they have. As prevailing social norms change, evangelical Christians confront intellectual and interpretive challenges as they quest to make an ancient book newly relevant and ever benevolent, especially for historically oppressed populations. While histories show us that white Christians in the US have frequently appealed to their Bibles in support of issues now judged to be on the wrong side of history, including racism, sexism, and colonialism, contemporary white evangelical figures have in recent years worked steadfastly to defend the Bible against charges of complicity in harm. This is especially the case when it comes to patriarchy and the place of women, as evangelicals conscript the Bible into arguments for and against patriarchal normativity in response to changing conceptions of what is good. The Bible's historical origins in the hierarchical, patriarchal contexts of the ancient world create challenges for any Christian seeking to interpret their Bible as fundamentally liberative.?Good Book?shows the creative negotiations that Bible-benevolence projects demand, as evangelicals wrestle both Jesus and Paul into advocates for women. The quest to maintain the Bible's goodness is ultimately a respectability project for evangelical Christians in the US who seek to maintain moral authority in an increasingly diverse religious landscape. Whether they rebrand patriarchy or seek to untangle the Bible from sexism, white evangelical Bible-benevolence projects perpetuate misogyny.

This book examines the narratives of series heroines that preceded and followed Nancy Drew, each in relation to their social, historical, and economic environments. Covering heroines including Miss Pickerell, Madge Sterling, and Polly the Powers Model, among others, this book illustrates that the recovery of stolen inheritances during the Great Depression serves different social ends than, for example, fighting Germans on an international stage. This book expands scholarship that tends to focus on Nancy Drew by drawing attention to the stories of some other “lost” heroines of twentieth century U.S. series fiction. Organized by time period, the chapters give insight into the cultural landscape that perpetuated the popularity of these heroines in their respective eras, how these series reflected the experiences of readers across the decades, and their continued impact well into the twenty-first century.

Key Frames examines the encounter between film studies and cultural studies, and offers new ways of reading popular film.

Exploring our belief in dividing, conquering, controlling, and converting, this catechism explains both contemporary culture and monotheism by its root--patriarchy. Inclusive of genderism/sexism, racism, and classism, patriarchy is over ten thousand years old, and is the real religion behind our cultural beliefs and many contemporary faiths. Gordon engages this topic through the lenses of Creation Spirituality, and suggests ritual forms that help us break free of our traditions. The Catechism of Patriarchy found within this work articulates clearly what we have come to believe about ourselves and our cultures.