3-EN ( 英文 ), 0300-Missionary ( 宣教研究 ), 0350-其他宗教／民間宗教／異端 

The body is still in the air, but how to relate the ongoing theoretical discussion to the concrete bodies that were once its point of departure. That's the motivating question behind Begin with the Body, a volume of essays on corporeality, religion and gender, a collective enterprise of the Dutch Research Programm for Religion and Gender. Popular religion and corporeality, more often than not interact in ways fatal to women. However, overcoming the mind/body dualism is no longer the direct objective. Rather, researchers are examining the generally ambivalent experiences expressed here and the availability of alternative terms of designation. Paradoxical notions counteract the tendency to associate women with the body and to percieve the body as "positively feminine": fluid, open and receptive. In precise case-studies on biblical representations, religious ideals and devotional practices we are warned against easy appropriations, simple reversals, and quick conclusions. Changes in physical condition - disease, pain, aging - have a great impact on experiences of subjectivity and meaning. Physical changes can generate shifts in religious and political concepts, but the reverse is also possible. The contributions contain a wealth of material from the visual arts and literature, from biblical to post-modern times. All contributions are evocative, experimental and imaginative, inspiring more questions than answers. Can we avoid binary oppositions in our efforts to do away with them ? What about inspired corporeality and body-oriented transcendence ? Do these notions presuppose a physical God ? Does it make sense to seek revelation of a Divinity-corporeality relation as such ? The direction of answering differs. Common is the drive to connect. 

Introduction / Jonneke Bekkenkamp and Maaike de Haardt -- Transience, Finitude and Identity: Reflecting the body dying / Maaike de Haardt -- Cosmic Transfigurations / Inez van der Spek -- Growing Old Gracefully The changing body of women: Looking for theological meanings / Riet Bons-Storm -- Love's fatality An ethical analysis of Margaret Drabble's The Millstone / Els Maeckelberghe -- '...Mit ihr gewachsen wie eine haut' Reflections on religiosity and corporality in Gertrud Kolmar's Eine judische Mutter Ria van den Brandt -- Sherman's Shadows: Pictures of corporeality and religion / Freda Droes -- Breaking the waves: Corporality and religion in a modern melodrama / Jonneke Beddenkamp -- Significance obscured: Rachel's theft of the Teraphim Divinity and Corporeality in Gen. 31 / Anne Marie Korte -- The body of god: A key for unlocking male monotheism? / Kune E. Biezeveld -- Mat[t]er, dichotomy: Some images of female and male bodies in the Hebrew Bible / Athalya Brenner -- Like angels in heaven corporeality, resurrection, and gender in Mark 12:18-27 / Caroline Vander Stichele -- 'Blessed are the bodies of the virgins...' / Magda Misset van de Weg -- Mary Gilligan Wong: The female body in convent and the renewal of the second vatican council / Annelies van Heijst -- The suffering body and the freedom of the soul: Medieval women's ways of union with God / Anke E. Passenier.