Omer may not have all the answers, but she has done all of the reading: the theologians, the feminist scholars, the trauma experts. “The fundamental question of why God is a man in Islam, in Christianity, in Judaism, and in many others, it is because they were born in a social context of patriarchy,” she says. “Take Christianity – it rose up in a time of feudal lands, lords and kings. All of this is represented in biblical language we use today, so the way we relate to God serves male power and authority.”
Reading Holy Woman, it is easy to feel encouraged by some of the women Omer talks to, who are doing brave things to make space for themselves, like the Swedish queer priest or the female imam in Morocco. But some will find it hard to not see what they are trying to do as futile: some Muslims would never accept a female imam, and some Christians would be appalled by the concept of a female God. (As Omer writes, Vatican City, the heart of Catholicism, is the only place in the world where women still can’t vote.) What does reinterpreting scripture matter when a religion remains patriarchal in practice?
I teach a class called “Death,” on the question of whether it is rational to be afraid of death. Like all my classes, it is a philosophy class, so of course I assign the seminal philosophical texts on that topic. But I also assign Karel Čapek’s play The Makropulos Affair, Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Philip Larkin’s “Aubade”—a poem I strongly disagree with. In my class on the philosophical puzzles surrounding self-creation, we read contemporary philosophical essays—and we also read novels by James Joyce and Elena Ferrante. I teach Shakespeare’s Hamlet alongside Descartes’s Meditations: they are both about what it’s like to be trapped in one’s own head, looking for a way out. I pair Plato’s Euthyphro with Sophocles’s Antigone, because they offer contrasting portraits of the clash between human and divine law. In my class on courage, we read some Platonic dialogues, bits and pieces of Aristotelian treatises and all 24 books of Homer’s Iliad.
Looking back, I am surprised by how many pages of literature I have assigned over the years, far more than is the norm in college philosophy classes. I never formulated a plan to do so; I never self-consciously aimed for interdisciplinarity. How did my syllabi wind up populated by so many novels, stories, poems and plays?
In her first book of nonfiction, a collection of 17 essays accompanying the popular title piece, "The Crane Wife," novelist C.J. Hauser takes the reader along on a soulful journey of self-discovery as she brings together smart, astute observations on modern love and life.
The beach, Stodola writes, “plays host in our collective imagination to the highest form of leisure.” The author goes deep on what compels throngs of humanity to sandy destinations – and at what cost to the people who live in these delicate habitats year round. Copiously researched, featuring disquieting interviews with locals, oceanographers and coastal geologists, The Last Resort is a timely look at the social, economic and ecological tentacles of this industry, from St. Kitts to Hawaii to Senegal.