Literacy, Reading, and Concepts of the Self

Steedman, Carolyn

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511609664.013

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…In general terms, we might say that when these women approached the Bible, which they regarded as the sacred word of God, they sought to turn the word-as-thing (the typed letters on the page) into word-as-event (an effect in the world). 16 One of their strategies for doing so was to look for ways of identifying with the biblical characters, as they worked with the connection between textual characters and self-construction that has come to be taken for granted in the modern period (Steedman 2009). The women's "affective identification" (D. Boyarin 1993: 19) was multi-layered: for example, they wished to connect with the story's original word-as-event in which Jesus spoke to Martha, and also to have this be eventful in their own lives through using Martha and Mary as role models or foils.…”

Section: R E a D I N G S O F T H E S T O R Y O F M A R Y A N D M A R mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconnecting Language and Materiality in Christian Reading: A Comparative Analysis of Two Groups of Protestant Women

Halvorson

Hovland

2021

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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What do Christians do when they read? How can Christian reading be understood anthropologically? Anthropologists of Christianity have offered many ethnographic descriptions of the interplay among people, words, and material objects across Christian groups, but descriptions of Christian reading have often posited an androgynous reader. In response to this we begin from the observation that while reading cannot be done without words, it also cannot be done without a body. We propose that an analytic approach of placing language and materiality (including bodies) together will help clarify that reading texts is an embodied practice, while not undermining the importance of working with words. We draw inspiration from the recent interest in bringing linguistic anthropology and materiality studies together into the same analytic frame of “language materiality.” We explore a language-materiality approach to reading by comparing how the biblical story of Mary and Martha was read by Protestant women in two historical situations: 1920s Norway and the 1950s United States. We argue that in these cases the readers’ gendered, raced, and classed bodies were central to the activity of reading texts, including their bodies’ material engagements with the world, such as carrying out women's work. We suggest that paying attention to embodied reading—that is, readers’ social entanglements with both language and materiality—yields a fuller analysis of what reading is in particular historical situations, and ultimately questions the notion of a singular Protestant semiotic ideology that works consistently toward purification.

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Section: R E a D I N G S O F T H E S T O R Y O F M A R Y A N D M A R mentioning

confidence: 99%