Laurie Cassidy

She Who Imagines: Feminist Theological Aesthetics Laurie Cassidy

Marc Notes: ; 8; The idea and ideal of beauty has been used to oppress women of different ages, body types, skin colour, and physical ability. The theoretical discussion of aesthetics has also been conditioned by these same dynamics of power and oppression. In this book, a diverse set of scholars challenges the exclusion and false definitions while constructing capacious ideas that discover beauty in unexpected places.. Table of Contents: Foreword / Elizabeth A. Johnson -- Introduction / Laurie Cassidy, Maureen H. O'Connell -- Acknowledgments -- Part 1. She Who Imagines -- For the Beauty of the Earth: Women, Sacramentality, and Justice / Susan A. Ross -- Theological Aesthetics and the Encounter with Tonantzin Guadalupe / Jeanette Rodriguez -- Kollwitz: The Beauty and Brutality of the Pieta / Jayme M. Hennessy -- Contemplating the Landscapes of Motherhood: The Discovery of Beauty in a Place We Thought We Knew / Colleen Mary Carpenter -- Part 2. She Who Is Imagined -- The Critical Aesthetics of Race / M. Shawn Copeland -- The Jennifer Effect: Race, Religion, and the Body / Michelle A. Gonzalez -- Picturing Suffering: The Moral Dilemmas in Gazing at Photographs of Human Anguish / Laurie Cassidy -- AIDS, Accountability, and Activism: The Beauty of Sue Williamson's Resistance Art / Kimberly Vrudny -- Part 3. She Who Imagines -- Picturing Paradise: Imagination, Beauty, and Women's Lives in a Peruvian Shantytown / Rebecca Berru Davis -- A Harsh and Dreadful Beauty: The Aesthetic Dimension of Dorothy Day's Ethics / Maureen H. O'Connell -- Being Immaculate: Images of Oppression and Emancipation / Mary Ann Zimmer -- The Feminine Face of God Is My Face: On the Empowerment of Female Self-Portraiture / Susie Paidik Babka -- List of Contributors. Review Quotes: Calling into question the overlooked reality of women as creators and interpreters of beauty, [this book] opens new dimensions in the developing area of theological aesthetics as well as the traditional field of theological anthropology.. Its contribution to theology lies in the way it knocks on the door of theological aesthetics, showing the enrichment that could ensue if it opened to include women, their imaginative work of critique and their constructive work of interpretation. More broadly, it takes its place in the growing body of work that contributes to the struggle for human dignity and spiritual self-determination for women that is a hallmark of our time. Read it with anticipation of bracing critique and constructive ideas, especially regarding the linkage of beauty with justice. From the Foreword by Elizabeth A. Johnson, author of "Quest for the Living God"Publisher Marketing: The idea and ideal of "beauty" has been used to oppress women of different ages, body types, skin color, and physical ability. The theoretical discussion of aesthetics has also been conditioned by these same dynamics of power and oppression. In "She Who Imagines," a diverse set of scholars challenges the exclusion and false definitions while constructing capacious ideas that discover beauty in unexpected places. In these essays, the authors draw on a variety of arts media-painting, photography, portraiture, craftwork, poetry, and hip-hop music-thereby joining beauty to truth and, in a richly defining way, to the practice of justice. In a variety of ways all the essays link women's definitions of beauty with experiences of suffering and hence with the yearning for justice. All clearly prize resistance to degradation as an essential element of thought. Contributor Bio:  Cassidy, Laurie Laurie Cassidy, an assistant professor of religious studies at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania, is the co-editor of Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence (Orbis, 2007). Contributor Bio:  O'Connell, Maureen H Maureen H. O'Connell is an assistant professor of theology at Fordham University and the author of Compassion: Loving Our Neighbor in an Age of Globalization (2009) and several articles on political theology and theological aesthetics. Contributor Bio:  Johnson, Elizabeth A Elizabeth A. Johnson, C. S. J., is distinguished Professor of Theology at Fordham University. She has received numerous awards, including the Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for She Who Is (1993), the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion for Friends of God and Prophets (1999), and the Book Award of the College Theology Society for Truly Our Sister (2004). She was also the recipient of the John Courtney Murray Award of the Catholic Theological Society of America, the Jerome Award of the Catholic Library Association, and the Monika K. Hellwig Award of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.