Religious Desire in the Poetry of Vittoria Colonna : Insights into Early Modern Piety and Poetics

This chapter examines Vittoria Colonna’s biblically inspired verse and the pious traditions to which they point, suggesting that for her, a devout writer, the Bible was not just a text to be read, interpreted, written about and shared, but also prayed and ruminated upon. Through a close reading of selected verses in which the poet inserts scriptural transpositions into poetic constructs highlighting the lyric persona’s unrealized spiritual desires, this chapter explores the writer’s practice and seeming promotion of the lectio divina and the lectio spiritualis, that is, of her use of the Bible not as a pious source of inspiration, but as an instrument of personal devotion by which she might be brought to direct, personally transformative engagement with the divine.

Food pedagogy for transformative social change

The contemporary global agrarian regime has altered the patterns of food production, circulation, and consumption. Its efforts towards food security vis-á-vis capitalist modes of mechanized cultivation have produced large-scale climatic and socioeconomic ramifications, including the dispossession of small-scale farmers from their lands and positions in market value-chains. In an effort to improve the dynamics of contemporary agro-food systems, food practitioners and scholars are engaging in critical analyses of land-grabbing, the feminization of agriculture, extractive-led development, and more. However, we argue that there is a gap between Food Studies scholarship and community-based transformative engagement. To support social justice frameworks, our paper calls for an academic paradigm shift wherein learner-centered experiential classrooms bridge academic-public divides and enhance student learning. Through a case-study of urban farming in Calgary, we also explore topics in place-based learning and participatory approaches that acknowledge and integrate Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, being, and connecting. Our paper provides strategies for supporting local food systems through activist scholarship, capacity building of leadership and technical skills in advanced urban farming, and intercultural relationship building. We conclude by evaluating the success of our approach, presenting potential benefits and challenges, and providing recommendations for best practices in food scholarship to support transformative change.

Resource extraction and intersectoral research: Engaging accountable relations in the Environment Community Health Observatory Network

The inaugural gathering of The Environment Community Health Observatory (ECHO) Network is a network of academic, non-profit, and health authority scholars and practitioners committed to understanding and responding to the cumulative impacts of resource extraction. The Network is embedded within multiple jurisdictions and institutional contexts, reflecting the Network’s efforts to work across sectors to address questions arising in communities and regions experiencing the overlapping influences of rurality, remoteness, and resource extraction. In this paper, we draw from entrance interviews and a group exercise with Network members to explore the complexity of accountability as an unfolding challenge for research that addresses resource extraction in Canada. We locate these findings within the current settler colonial context in which the Network is embroiled, arguing that a condition of settler colonialism is erasing not only Indigenous legal orders but also accountability mechanisms outside of state-based discourses. In making this argument, we understand settler colonialism as a failed yet persistent project. We contend that collectively engaging through situated and relational accountabilities beyond simply accounting for “accountability”, ECHO Network members—and others looking to social and environmental change—are critically challenged to approach settler-state apparatuses for transformative engagement beyond merely recognizing that accountability is relational.

Introduction

This chapter argues that the time is right for an interdisciplinary dialogue between anthropology and theology that does not merely aid each discipline in achieving its traditional goals, but that seeks to transform their approaches to key issues around the nature of human experience and social life. The time is right because a rapid recent growth in interest in Christianity on the anthropological side has coincided with a burgeoning interest in world Christianity from the theological side. The chapter traces the development of these trends. It then shows that recent anthropological arguments in favour of ‘ethnographic theory’—the practice of using concepts drawn from the social life of others to create general theories—offers a foundation from which anthropologists can make productive theoretical use of theological concepts. It concludes by laying out the prospects for a transformative engagement between anthropology and theology that sets out from this starting point.

Conceiving a space for compassionate engagement with LGBT+ university lecturers around professional identity

<p>Fear of harassment and physical violence (Patridge, Barthelemy and Rankin, 2014), experiences of discrimination, perceptions of a lack of support, lower job satisfaction (Cech and Pham 2017), feelings of isolation, and a need to work harder than colleagues to convince others of their competence (Yoder and Mattheis 2016) – these characterise the reported workplace experience of LGBT+ people in STEM disciplines in both academic and professional contexts.</p><p>Williams, Giuffre and Dellinger (2009) coin the term ‘the gay-friendly closet’ to reflect the experience of people who, despite being out in gay-friendly workplaces, report that they still downplay their homosexuality, or conform to stereotypes of how LGBT+ people are “expected to look, act and work” (p. 29).  Many of their respondents claimed their acceptance as ‘normal’ ran alongside their own invisibility (know-one-knows-I-am-gay narratives). Other respondents, felt their acceptance was contingent on their choice not to ‘overplay’ their homosexuality. Tensions exist between negotiating a professional identity while managing perceptions so they are situated within the bounds of acceptability (Rumens and Kerfoot 2009; Benozzo et al. 2015). Gay/lesbian respondents have suggested that acceptability in the workplace is contingent on self-censorship, selective revelation, and/or assimilative compromises, all of which legitimize heteronormative discourses around sexuality and professional identity. These issues are recognised as more significant within STEM disciplines – which is considered a stridently masculinist and heteronormative field (Bilimoria and Stewart 2009; Cech and Pham 2017).</p><p>In an educational context where LGBT+ students have the right to remain invisible, Toynton (2006) questions whether educators have the same right. Kumashiro (2015) suggests that educators may have an obligation, for fundamental educational reasons, to be ‘out’ to their learners. Toynton (2006) frames this as an element of the debate around ‘safe places’ for queer students, and suggests it sets up a dilemma for queer educators - trapping them between empathy and potential hostility – requiring a choice between an ‘enabling visibility’ and the risk of alienation.</p><p>The presentation will explore the links between critical educational praxis (focussed on Freire (1996), hooks (1994) and Britzman (1995)), queer theory (primarily Butler (1999) and Foucault (1990)), and anarchist methodologies and ethics (Deleuze and Guattari (1994) and Heckert (2016)). It will consider how this integration produces a space based on post-structural / post-human readings of sexuality and identity that enables transformative engagement, and commits to radical compassion as the primary ethos for research engagement.</p>

Christian Pastors and Alleged Child Witches in Kinshasa, DRC

Against earlier predictions, witch accusations are proliferating and flourishing in many modern, urban, and Christian environments. And they are taking new forms. One dramatic change involves who is accused, with children now often the prime suspects when misfortunes occur. Another dramatic change relates to who is consulted when witch suspicions are present. Rather than non-Christian diviners or traditional healers, many now consult Christian pastors and prophets for help in identifying witches and dealing with them. Based on a survey of 713 pastoral leaders in Kinshasa from all major church traditions, and on supplemental qualitative research, this report 1) explores the profile of accused children, 2) identifies what these children are accused of, 3) identifies what sorts of evidence are used to establish the guilt of the accused child, and 4) considers the consequences to the child of being labeled a witch. Furthermore, this report explores what it is that church leaders believe, teach, and practice in relationship to child-witch allegations—considering the role of church tradition and theological education on their patterns of understanding and engagement. Specifically, we identify and examine two broad paradigms widely present in Kinshasa churches—a “witch diagnosis and deliverance paradigm” and a “child protection paradigm.” We consider some grassroots strategies of transformative engagement engaged in by l’Équipe Pastorale auprès des Enfants en Détresse [EPED] leaders, and end by inviting African theological and pastoral leaders into a conversation about the impact of theological understandings, congregational discourses, spiritual disciplines, and pastoral practices on the well-being and flourishing of vulnerable children.

There is Nowhere to Hide: Spirit and Heart in Afro-Indigenous Transformative Engagement

An Introduction to the Special Issue