Uncovering hidden histories, this book focuses on Korean Buddhist nuns and laywomen from the fourth century to the present. Today, South Korea's Buddhist nuns have a thriving monastic community under their own control, and they are well known as meditation teachers and social service providers. However, little is known of the women who preceded them. Using primary sources to reveal that which has been lost, forgotten, or willfully ignored, this work reveals various figures, milieux, and activities of female adherents, clerical and lay. Contributors consider examples from the early days of Buddhism in Korea during the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla periods (first millennium CE); the Koryŏ period (982–1392), when Buddhism flourished as the state religion; the Chosŏn period (1392–1910), when Buddhism was actively suppressed by the Neo-Confucian Court; and the contemporary resurgence of female monasticism that began in the latter part of the twentieth century.

In her study of Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot, Lesa Scholl shows how three Victorian women writers broadened their capacity for literary professionalism by participating in translation and other conventionally derivative activities such as editing and reviewing early in their careers. In the nineteenth century, a move away from translating Greek and Latin Classical texts in favour of radical French and German philosophical works took place. As England colonised the globe, Continental philosophies penetrated English shores, causing fissures of faith, understanding and cultural stability. The influence of these new texts in England was unprecedented, and Eliot, Brontë and Martineau were instrumental in both literally and figuratively translating these ideas for their English audience. Each was transformed by access to foreign languages and cultures, first through the written word and then by travel to foreign locales, and the effects of this exposure manifest in their journalism, travel writing and fiction. Ultimately, Scholl argues, their study of foreign languages and their translation of foreign-language texts, nations and cultures enabled them to transgress the physical and ideological boundaries imposed by English middle-class conventions.

This landmark presentation at last makes heard the centuries of Zen's female voices. Through exploring the teachings and history of Zen's female ancestors, from the time of the Buddha to ancient and modern female masters in China, Korea, and Japan, Grace Schireson offers us a view of a more balanced Dharma practice, one that is especially applicable to our complex lives, embedded as they are in webs of family relations and responsibilities, and the challenges of love and work. Part I of this book describes female practitioners as they are portrayed in the classic literature of "Patriarchs' Zen"--often as "tea-ladies," bit players in the drama of male students' enlightenments; as "iron maidens," tough-as-nails women always jousting with their male counterparts; or women who themselves become "macho masters," teaching the same Patriarchs' Zen as the men do. Part II of this book presents a different view--a view of how women Zen masters entered Zen practice and how they embodied and taught Zen uniquely as women. This section examines many urgent and illuminating questions about our Zen grandmothers: How did it affect them to be taught by men? What did they feel as they trying to fit into this male practice environment, and how did their Zen training help them with their feelings? How did their lives and relationships differ from that of their male teachers? How did they express the Dharma in their own way for other female students? How was their teaching consistently different from that of male ancestors? And then part III explores how women's practice provides flexible and pragmatic solutions to issues arising in contemporary Western Zen centers.

The THRIVE Devotional Bible for Women is for every woman who wants to know God more deeply and follow Him more closely. God's design for His children is that they live flourishing, fulfilling, joy-filled lives in Christ. Bestselling author and beloved speaker Sheri Rose Shepherd has devoted over 30 years of her ministry to helping women learn how to thrive in Christ, reflect God's glory, and gain an eternal perspective. Sheri Rose invites women to join her on a yearlong journey through the Bible in THRIVE. The daily devotionals capture the very heart of her ministry by helping women discover their identity in Christ; God's purpose and plan for their lives; and how to flourish in a faith that is pure, genuine, and life-giving. Each day's devotional reading contains a key Scripture, a love letter from God, a reflection from Sheri Rose, a treasure of truth, and a special prayer for the reader. Sheri Rose encourages women to leave all their concerns and struggles at the foot of the cross so they can truly thrive as the women God created them to be. This beautiful women's devotional Bible features a rose and black interior printed on high-quality cream Bible paper.

This study examines Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian women writers, as well as analysing the roles of women of African descent in Cuban and Brazilian literature. Initially, literary imagination locked women into circumscribed roles, a result of hierarchies embedded in slavery and colonialism, and sustained by hierarchical theories on race and gender.The discussion illustrates how these negative aspects have influenced the mainstream literary imagination that contrasts with the 'self-portrayals' created by women writers themselves. Even as there continues to be disadvantageous constructions, there is no doubt that a modification has occurred over time in images, representation, and articulation. It is a change directly associated with the instances when women themselves are the writers.The historiographic image of the Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian woman as a written object is ideologically replaced by a vision of her as a writing subject. It is here that the vision of a creative, multifaceted, and diversified literature becomes important.