Introduction. Gender, Religion and Feminism(s): An Interdisciplinary Approach

Gender, Religion and Feminism(s): An Interdisciplinary Approach stems from the international seminar dedicated to ‘Gender and Religion’, which was organized by the PhD Curriculum EDGES in ‘Women’s and Gender Studies’. This initiative took place within the thematic framework of the ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ project developed by the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures (LILEC) of the University of Bologna. Planning such a seminar responded to a need that we literary scholars, together with our PhD students in Gender Studies, felt was essential in order to discover and understand more about categories of gender, sexuality and diversity when investigating the significance of religion(s) in cultural processes and current social development. This occasion thus gave us the opportunity to question and give voice to a vibrant cultural conversation from an interdisciplinary perspective, that explored the extent to which feminism(s) and gender analysis have been generating alternative readings of women’s agency ‘through’ and within theology and religious studies.