Department of Religious Studies

Elizabeth M. Bucar, Assistant Professor

PhD Religion, University of Chicago 2006

embucar@uncg.edu

Areas of Academic Interest

• Comparative Religious Ethics
• Shi'ism in Iran
• Gender in the Muslim World
• Human Rights and Religion
• Gender Studies
• Christian-Muslim Understanding

Personal Statement

I am a comparativist who works within the Shia and Catholic traditions. I apply historical, linguistic, and anthropological methodologies to the study of religion. At the same time, I approach the study of religion primarily as a religious ethicist, posing theological and philosophical questions to this subject matter. My case studies focus on women’s social movements, emergent forms of political action, and performances of gender and sexuality.

Publications

• “Capacities, Skills, and the Ambiguity of Moral Excellence: Response to Aaron Stalnaker’s Virtue as Mastery,” Journal of Religious Ethics (forthcoming 2010).
• “Gender and Comparative Religious Ethics,” with I. Oh and G. Kao, Journal of Religious Ethics (forthcoming 2010).
• “Bodies at the margins: The Case of Transsexuality in Catholic and Shia Ethics,” Journal of Religious Ethics (forthcoming 2010).
• “Ethical Genre in the Digital Age: The Case of Reading Weblogs in Tehran,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics (fall/winter 2009).
• "Free Speech in Weblogistan? The Off-line Consequences of On-line Discourse," with Roja Fazaeli, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (Aug. 2008).
• "Methodological Invention as a Constructive Project: Exploring the Production of Ethical Knowledge Through the Interaction of Discursive Logics," Journal of Religious Ethics (Sept. 2008).
• "Speaking of Motherhood: The Epideictic Rhetoric of John Paul II and Ayatollah Khomeini," Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics (Fall/Winter 2006).
• "Women, Gender, and Non-Governmental Organizations: Iran," Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, ed. A. Joseph (The Netherlands: Brill, 2006).
• Does Human Rights Need God? ed. E. Bucar and B. Barnett (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).

Current Research

My early publications are the first stage of a three-part research agenda. First, drawing on conceptual work I began in my dissertation, I am in the final stages of completing a book manuscript based on fieldwork conducted in Iran and the U.S., provisionally titled Creative Conformity: The Feminist Politics of Catholic and Shia Women. Second, building on my human rights experience, I am developing a project focused on human rights and Islam in Iran as expressed and contested through new media (such as weblogs). Third, I continue to work comparatively, as I believe inter-tradition work provides unique insights at the intra-tradition level as well. Inspired by what I initially perceived as a logical tension between the Iranian legal prohibition of homosexuality (a crime punishable by death in the Islamic Republic of Iran) and the permission given by Shia clerics for gender reassignment operations, I have begun a book project to explore the debate over the relationship between sexuality and morality tentatively titled The Good of Ambiguous Bodies.

Teaching Philosophy

My goals for students include openness to new ideas, an informed concern about contemporary gender issues and their historical groundings, and an appreciation for other cultural and religious traditions. I believe the most successful courses on Islam and ethics not only help students to understand a given thinker’s or community’s argument or practice, but also encourage them to reconsider their own presumptions about what is “real,” “true,” and “good.” My time in the classroom as an instructor has convinced me that a combination of enthusiasm for one’s subject, respect for students’ intelligence, and ability to hear the unstated concerns behind student questions are the key components to excellent teaching.

Courses Taught

Religion 225

An Introduction to Islam: Concepts, Practices, and Debates

Since September 11th, interest in Islam has grown tremendously, especially in the United States where it has been the subject of much media commentary and political debate. This course seeks to prepare students to read these public discussions with a critical eye by providing an introduction to the major concepts and practices of Islam and the meta-narratives built into particular intra-Muslim debates. We will think about Islam in terms of its diversity by focusing on a series of key debates in Islamic thought and practice from its early history to the present day. Assuming satisfactory completion of the course, students will have an introductory knowledge of Islamic concepts, practices, and debates. They will have exposure to Islam in its historical, geographic, and philosophical diversity. Students will be able to comment thoughtfully and critically on various Muslim positions on important issues of our time such as jihad and gender roles. By grounding a number of intra-Muslim debates within Islamic history and politics, the hope is that the student will learn the fundamentals of Islamic theology and practice, not as timeless abstracts, but rather as dynamic forces that exist in conversation with the past, from which they emerge, the present, in which they are situated, and the diversity of futures, toward which they are directed.

Religion 248

Topics in Religious Social Ethics: Does Human Rights Need God?

During the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain commented “we agree on these rights, providing we are not asked why. With the ‘why,’ the dispute begins.” The text of the Declaration itself remained intentionally vague on “the why” of human rights, and the world community has to some extent continued to agree to disagree, fearing that any discussion of the differences among the various rationales for human rights would undermine the consensus of the Declaration. In contrast, this course will delve into the foundational questions of “the why” of human rights, focusing our inquiry on the relationship of religion and human rights and guided by the assumption that attention to the rationale of human rights might help us to understand these rights more fully in theory and practice. The course is organized into three units. First, we explore the religious arguments for resonance between religious values and human rights ideals. Second, we consider accounts that deny a legitimate role for religion in “the why” of human rights. Third, we discuss specific regional examples of ways in which religion has been implicated in human rights.

Religion 410

Senior Seminar

This course, required of all Religious Studies majors, has three goals. First, it offers the Department a vehicle to examine how well students have mastered both the content and the skills that are critical to the academic study of religion. It does this by putting students in a real seminar setting in which they are called on to read, discuss, and critique three recent works in the field. Second, it affords majors an opportunity to fulfill both a writing intensive requirement and a speaking intensive requirement for the major. Finally, Senior Seminar serves as an important component of the Department’s own assessment regime by providing feedback on the effectiveness of the major curriculum.

Religion 316

Islam and the Construction of Gender

This course will use hijab to explore the relationship between Islam, gender, and the politics of dress (other themes could be used in future versions).  The course is compromised of two units.  First, we consider the theological grounds for a Muslim form of gendered dress in the Quranic and Hadith injunctions to veil, and how these injunctions are interpreted or critiqued by contemporary religious and feminist thinkers.  Second, through text-based sources (including ethnographies and court cases), we consider how Muslim women and men perform hijab in a variety of countries.  In this unit we will be concerned with understanding what wearing hijab “can do,” that is, its political power.  Case studies to be considered include women’s practice of “bad hijab” within the context of compulsory veiling in the Islamic Republic of Iran; the new veiling movements among middle class women in Egypt; the unveiling of school girls in France; and the use of hijab by men such as warias in Indonesia and hijras in India.