Author Archives

• The Next Liberal Prophet: What Will She Look Like? By Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on January 24, 2013 • ( 13 )

  This past Martin Luther King, Jr. day, I was privileged enough to attend the 57th presidential inauguration at the U.S. Capitol.  Spirits were high and it seemed as if we were breathing recycled air infused with the hope of four… Read More ›

• We Are All Earthings: Speciesism and Feminist Responsibility Toward Animals by Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on December 28, 2012 • ( 18 )

  “earth’ling: n. One who inhabits the earth.” – Earthlings, 2006 “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creatures through… Read More ›

• Blessed Are The Organized, by Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on November 22, 2012 • ( 4 )

  It was a humid yet windy day in Broward County, South Florida. My long pants and sleeves were becoming hostile towards me as I proceeded to slip off my shoes, don my borrowed headscarf, and set up shop just outside… Read More ›

• Happiness is a Warm Space: Enchantment as Feminist Virtue by Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on August 30, 2012 • ( 4 )

  

  Art can provide a balm for the modern soul – Claude Monet Living in New York has its vices, and anxiety-triggering space is one of many. Though the city offers ailments just the same, whether they are in the form… Read More ›

• Through Body and Space: A Glimpse into Women Worshippers of Aadhi Parashakthi by Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on August 2, 2012 • ( 8 )

  

  Once what happened was after people started believing someone around also started believing in this temple and one person kept a statue on their steps. Her Aunty she believed and she is very much interested in small things. So she… Read More ›

• Deepa Mehta’s “​Water” and Homegrown Indian Feminism by Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on July 5, 2012 • ( 16 )

  

  In the first scene of the Deepa Mehta’s 2005 Indian film Water, a father tells his eight year old daughter, Chuyia, “Child. Do you remember getting married? Your husband is dead. You’re a widow now.”  These are some of the… Read More ›

• Jewish Weddings: Identity, Desire, and Anxiety by Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on June 7, 2012 • ( 6 )

  

  As a Jewish feminist, I’m often critical of marriage. And, as a 26-year old (this month) who attended Jewish camp, leadership/environmental programs in Israel, and was active in Jewish youth groups growing up, I’ve been frequenting my fair share of… Read More ›

• Liberalism as Feminist Religious Tradition: Friend or Foe? By Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on May 10, 2012 • ( 14 )

  Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving – Elizabeth Cady Stanton Whenever I find myself in conversation with a liberal skeptic who assumes that the existence of a liberal… Read More ›

• Beyond “Liberal” Female Piety or “Women Read the Qur’an Too” by Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on March 15, 2012 • ( 9 )

  I’m a teacher’s assistant for an undergraduate course at New York University called, “What is Islam?” The other day in class, my professor asked the students whether or not the Qur’an is considered a “book”. Fraught with anxiety over inheriting… Read More ›

• Bareed Mista3jil: Negotiating Gender, Sexuality, and Religion in Lebanon by Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on February 16, 2012 • ( 1 )

  It’s not often (enough) that I (have the time to) come across non-academic books that articulate and reflect some of the most complex intersections between religion, gender, and sexuality. Those that do are commonly produced in the Western hemisphere, often… Read More ›

• The Land of the (Not Quite) Free: Women and Religion Behind Bars by Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on January 19, 2012 • ( 6 )

  The sun was setting on an early Friday evening in October 2008 as I pulled into the parking lot of the Iowa Correctional Institute for Women, a maximum level security prison housing nearly 700 inmates. Though the serene drive on… Read More ›

• A Room of One’s Own: Sacred Women’s Space by Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on December 8, 2011 • ( 13 )

  I normally don’t get too personal in my blog posts. I figure if I’m going to take up space on the blog I might as well offer up something other than me, my voice, my body, and instead some good… Read More ›

• Women, Religion and Consumption By Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on November 10, 2011 • ( 4 )

  While my last post focused on the similarities between the social and collective experience (perhaps qua Durkheim?) of the occupy movement and the feminist movement in religion, I’d like to continue thinking about themes by taking a different path towards… Read More ›

• Occupying Feminism/Religion: Letting Community Consciousness Roam Free By Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on October 13, 2011 • ( 8 )

  Becoming involved in the women’s movement means moving from isolation as a woman to community. Through telling my story, I reach out to other women. Through their hearing, which both affirms my story and makes it possible, they reach out to me. I am able to move, gradually, from defensiveness to openness, from fear of questioning to a deep and radical questioning of the premises from which I have lived my life. I experience relief; my anger has been heard, and I am not alone. But I am also frightened; I am undermining my own foundations. The walls come tumbling down. – Judith Plaskow, The Coming of Lilith

  Lately, I’ve been thinking about this blog – what it does – in relation to my life, as it promotes the intersection between scholarship, activism, and community. I notice these three elements in most, if not all of the FAR posts, but I’ve been wondering what exactly it means to really embody a life that allows scholarship, activism, and community to mutually mix and inform each other.

• Feminist Imaginings in the Contemporary Kabbalah Movement By Amy Levin

  By Amy Levin on September 5, 2011 • ( 4 )

  

  Amy Levin is a graduate student in Religious Studies at New York University with an interdisciplinary focus on American religion, gender and queer theory, secularization, spirituality, and consumption. She is a regular contributor to The Revealer and a practicing feminist. If Kabbalah… Read More ›