A Garland of Feminist Reflections

"In this book, the reader absorbs the intelligence of Rita Gross' mind, the frustrations and sorrows of her role as a reformer, her perseverance and her yearning." Shambhala Sun "An indispensable collection of her best collected writing from the past forty years... Gross' writing is strikingly beautiful." Feminist Review "This compilation only whets the reader's appetite for another such volume." Waterwheel

Rita M. Gross is Professor Emerita of Comparative Studies in Religion at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. She is the author and editor of many books, including Religious Feminism and the Future of the Planet: A Buddhist-Christian-Feminist Conversation.

I. INTRODUCTORY MATERIALS Introducing A Garland of Feminist Reflections 1. How Did This Ever Happen to Me? A Wisconsin Farm Girl Who Became a Buddhist Theologian When She Grew Up II. FIVE ESSAYS ON METHOD 2. Androcentrism and Androgyny in the Methodology of History of Religions 3. Where Have We Been? Where Do We Need to Go? Key Questions for Women Studies in Religion and Feminist Theology 4. The Place of the Personal and the Subjective in Religious Studies 5. Methodology: Tool or Trap? Comments from a Feminist Perspective 6. What Went Wrong? Feminism and Freedom from the Prison of Gender Roles III. THEORY APPLIED: THREE TESTS 7. Menstruation and Childbirth as Ritual and Religious Experience among Native Australians 8. Toward a New Model of the Hindu Pantheon: A Report on Twenty-Some Years of Feminist Reflection 9. The Prepatriarchal Hypothesis: An Assessment IV. FEMINIST THEOLOGY 10. Steps toward Feminine Imagery in Jewish Theology 11. Is the (Hindu) Goddess a Feminist? 12. Life-Giving Images in Vajrayana Buddhist Ritual 13. Feminist Theology as Theology of Religions V. BUDDHIST FEMINISM: FEMINIST BUDDHISM 14. The Clarity in the Anger 15. Why (Engaged) Buddhists Should Care about Gender Issues 16. The Dharma of Gender 17. Yeshe Tsogyel: Enlightened Consort, Great Teacher, Female Role Model 18. Buddhist Women and Teaching Authority 19. Is the Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full? A Feminist Assessment of Buddhism at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century 20. Being a North American Buddhist Woman: Reflections of a Feminist Pioneer Notes