**This class will be taught on Zoom**
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Based on her recent book, this course explores the lives of a gallery of female saints through the lens of several intellectual disciplines. It is not about religion but about remarkable women in the context of their historical times and cultural backgrounds. “…saints provide windows on events in the world around them and offer ways of charting change over time” (Bilinkoff, 2003). “…the pursuit and perception of holiness mirrors social values and concerns…saints’ lives shed light upon social issues and collective mentalities” (Weinstein & Bell, 1982). These saints’ strategies of resistance and accommodation to authority and to normative women’s roles are relevant today. Their stories reveal strong characters, different from the trite depiction of female saints as silent, obedient, and submissive. This course can be of interest to scholars and the general public interested in psychology, women’s studies, history, cultural and ethnic studies.
Week by Week Outline
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Week 1: Introduction: What is a saint? Who is a saint? What’s the relevance of saints? (All religions have saints)
Process and politics of Canonization in the Roman Catholic Church.
Political and cultural influences on sainthood.
Sainthood and women’s bodies.
Sainthood and sexuality.
Week 2: Rose of Lima and Mariana of Quito: Women’s bodies, gender, sexuality.
Latin American saints’ role in the development of national identities.
Week 3: Women saints as political agents: Joan of Arc, Catherine of Siena.
Some North American saints: Frances Cabrini, Elizabeth Seton, Katharine Drexel, Tekakwitha.
African American women on the road to sainthood.
Week 4: Doctors of the Church: Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, Thérèse of Lisieux, Hildegarde of Bingen.
Teresa of Avila: Writer, mystic, descendant of conversos, feminist before her time.
Week 5: Thérèse of Lisieux: Psychological distress and sainthood.
Week 6 Edith Stein’s paradoxical and conflictive sainthood: Philosopher, Jew, feminist, “martyr” at Auschwitz.
Summary and conclusions.
