Reclaiming Agency: Feminist Theology, Catholicism, and the Path to Women’s Sexual Empowerment

A Podcast by Hannah Smith Purpose:  The purpose of this project is to critically examine the role of feminist theology in addressing the historical marginalization of women’s sexual agency within Catholicism. By exploring the contributions of feminist theologians Rosemary Radford Ruether and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, this project seeks to understand how their critiques of patriarchal […]

Virgin, Mother, Whore

This series discusses how Christianity often categorizes women as either the Virgin, the Mother, or the Whore, with sexuality being the deciding factor in how they’re viewed. It looks at the contrast between “pious” women and those labeled as “disobedient,” tying it all back to the idea that God controls man, and man controls woman. Through collages that showcase these restrictive categories, I hope to show how these rigid tropes limit women and start a conversation about why sexuality plays such a big role in defining their worth.

I FORGIVE YOU FATHER FOR YOU HAVE SINNED ME – Maggie Syrett

Introduction to the piece: Growing up Irish Catholic, I was taught from a very young age that if I do wrong, I must ask for God’s forgiveness so that when I die I can go to heaven. As I grew up and realized more of the realities of the world, it seemed crazy to me […]

circumcision/superincision prevalence map

Inspecting Christian/ Catholic Guilt And It’s Origins In The Young Adult, American Woman

INTRODUCTION: An overwhelming amount of young adult American women suffer from Christian and Catholic guilt as they are coming out of adolescence and exploring their sexualities outside the confines of what they have been taught within their religious traditions and/ or communities. Much of this guilt stems from the inherent sex-negative Christian and Catholic culture […]

Visualization of the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study

In 2014, the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think tank, conducted its second Religious Landscape Study, in which they interviewed over 35000 Americans from all 50 states in order to understand the varying religious, social, and political views that are upheld by the people of the nation. For my final project in Sexuality in World […]