Brandeis Series on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law

The HBI and Brandeis University Press are collaborating on a new book series under the editorship of Lisa Fishbayn and Sylvia Neil.

The mandate for the series is to provide an avenue for publication of work that furthers our mission to foster dialogue about conflicts between women's claims to gender equality and practices justified in terms of religious and cultural tradition. This includes research on the rights of women in Jewish law, both in Israel and the Diaspora, and comparative work that considers women's rights under religious law from an inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspective.

The criteria for selection for the series are:

1) Does the work break new theoretical ground by:

1. developing new approaches to the place of gender in the political theory of multiculturalism
2. developing new theoretical tools for conceptualizing feminist projects for transforming the interpretation and justification of religious law
3. engaging in analysis of conflicts over gender and culture/religion in a particular religious tradition, cultural community or nation with a depth and complexity not seen in previous work.

2) Does the work engage with debates over gender and culture/religion from a cross-cultural perspective, by:

1. working with case studies that compare challenges and innovations in different legal, cultural or religious regimes
2. working on a single regimes or set of legal regimes, but constituting a contribution to a dialogue with other works previously published or contemplated for inclusion in the series.  This would entail, for example, works that address similar questions or take similar approaches to gender and religious law challenges in Jewish law and Muslim law published sequentially so that they “speak” to each other.

	1) Citizenship, Faith & Feminism: Jewish and Muslim Women Reclaim Their Rights, Jan Feldman, University of Vermont, (Spring 2011). Feldman builds on her scholarship about the political styles of ultra-orthodox Jews to provide an account of feminist law reformers in Kuwait and Israel as "connected critics". The HBI hosted a book launch event , click here to see pictures.
	2) Fertility and Jewish Law: Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature, Ronit Irshai, Bar Ilan University (forthcoming June 2012) A comprehensive comparative study of Jewish law on contemporary reproductive issues from a gender perspective.
	3) Polygamy in Primetime: Media, Gender, and Politics in Mormon Fundamentalism, Janet Bennion, Lyndon State College ( forthcoming May 2012) A provocative look at the costs and benefits of polygamy among western fundamentalist Mormon women
	4) Self-Determination and Women's Rights in Muslim Societies, Chitra Raghavan, ed.; James P. Levine, ed.; Jeremy Travis, fwd. (forthcoming July 2012). An interdisciplinary anthology on the intersections of gender, Islam, and law