Catachresis: Religion, Gender, and Postcoloniality

Abstract

The theme of this issue of Religion and Gender is the relationship between the categories of religion, gender, and postcoloniality refracted through the figure of ‘catachresis’. The papers collected here are but a small sample of those presented at a workshop held at SOAS, University of London on 17–19 December 2012 entitled ‘Catachreses: Gender, Religion, and Postcoloniality’. The workshop itself was organized as one of the planned activities of an international research and networking project – ‘Interdisciplinary Innovations in the Study of Religion and Gender: Postcolonial, Post-secular and Queer Perspectives’ (IISRG) – led by Utrecht University, Faculty of Humanities, and funded by the Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research (NWO) under its ‘Internationalisation in the Humanities’ programme. The project has brought together leading scholars in the field of Religion and Gender from internationally renowned research institutions (see http://projectreligionandgender.org/participants/) with the objective of developing research project proposals and grant applications and establishing a structural research network for the study of religion and gender. The aim of the IISRG project is to contribute to the development of the interdisciplinary study of religion and gender from a range of contemporary critical perspectives in the humanities and social sciences by focusing on three important themes: