Author Archives
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Reflection for the End of the Year by Sara Frykenberg
At my school, a religious institution, we start every faculty meeting with a reflection, meant to inspire us, make us think, help us to connect, etc. I am admittedly, sometimes very uncomfortable with these reflections. I don’t always like corporate… Read More ›
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What We Can’t See by Sara Frykenberg
As a professor, I find myself returning to a similar struggle again and again. I know what I know; and I know what I hope students will gain from the class, in terms of content knowledge, critical thinking, classroom community-making,… Read More ›
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Just South of Ventura by Sara Frykenberg
For those of us living in Southern California, it has been a tense week to say the least: flames ravaging up and down the coast, homes lost, thousands displaced, freeway and school closures, smoke thick in the air, and ash… Read More ›
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Freedom and Speech by Sara Frykenberg
Feminist theories and theo/alogies are often concerned with voice, naming and re-membering. Many feminists do this work, again and again, because of persistent silence and silencing, invisibility, erasure of stories, desires, religions and ways of being, because of missing histories,… Read More ›
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Working Hard at Spirituality by Sara Frykenberg
I sometimes have to work hard at spirituality. … And I haven’t been. I have realized that lately, when I sit down to write blogs for this community, I have a difficult time incorporating one of the most basic FAR… Read More ›
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Making America What Again? Reflections for the 4th of July by Sara Frykenberg
I find myself asking (again), when the religious right, evangelicals, and Christian fundamentalists hear Trump say, “Make America Great Again,” do they really hear him saying, “Make America Christian Again?” How can the really hear him saying that in light of what this man has actually said and actually done? The answer: because of the same mythical purity that erases the violence, slaughter, and atrocity attached to this “Christian nation’s” founding.
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Careful Criticism: Resisting Hetero-Patriarchy while Resisting Trump by Sara Frykenberg
My students are taking their final exams this week, which means I will be spending the week frantically, but attentively grading in order to make our grade submission deadline next week. End of semester grading is a mountain of careful… Read More ›
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Modern Matricide by Sara Frykenberg
Many feminist theologians powerfully and convincingly ague that racist, capitalistic hetero-patriarchy is matricidal, as are its religions. Mother-murder takes a variety of forms, including: Suppression of mother goddesses/ the mother goddess through establishment of patriarchal religion, Erasure and appropriation of… Read More ›
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You Can’t Debate Mutuality by Sara Frykenberg
I use words like “mutuality,” “listening,” and “love,” here as I discuss my understanding of feminist justice-making and eschew debate…I want to make it abundantly clear: I see these as powerful, often forceful and even angry tools. We listen to what oppressors say so that they cannot deceive with their “alternative facts.” We love forcefully…We counter violence—we do not debate it—with anger, humor, creativity and power, in order to redirect its energies into more mutual possibilities.
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New Year and Sustainable Resolution by Sara Frykenberg
At the end of 2016, my foot hurt—my body telling me: it is painful to move forward as you have been. You have to walk differently. Yow have to walk with more support, and sometimes, carrying less weight.
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Turning One by Sara Frykenberg
This month I turn one as a mother. My daughter, consequently, is also turning one—a first birthday I am excitedly planning. Specifically, I want to make Hazel a rainbow cake with lots of colored layers and white frosting. I’m not… Read More ›
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Debating a “Winning” Personality by Sara Frykenberg
I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch the debate between presidential candidates last Tuesday. As John Erikson discussed in his post “The End is Nigh,” one could easily predict Trump’s sexism and misogyny, it was just a question of how… Read More ›
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Politics and Mythology by Sara Frykenberg
Some part of us buys into some part of our common mythology; hence, the importance of recognizing and interrogating the stories in which we (often unconsciously) participate.
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Reading for Fun and Compromise—My Ongoing Search for Feminist Literature by Sara Frykenberg
What I mean to say is, what if, when I wanted to read for fun or simply for the pleasure of reading, I were to put down any book that demonstrated buy-in to kyriarchal ideas, overtly or even in micro-aggressive ways? I have flippantly responded to this question, “then, I may never read any piece of fantasy literature again.”
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Parenting with the ‘Same Words’ by Sara Frykenberg
Teaching and talking with my daughter, I find myself revisiting the subtle and not so subtle kyriarchial language in my own upbringing in ways that I do not when speaking to other adults with my very intentional and well-trained adult language. Parenting sometimes feels like a trip back in time where I remember and more readily feel my joy of singing particular songs or reading particular stories, simultaneously feeling my inner feminist and adult self cringe at the messages in too many of these stories.
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A Short Lesson in Subjugated Knowledges
“We” can give many answers for how to colonize someone; but for many of us, it often takes special training, years of education, reconstructive projects, task forces, books upon book of reading, listening through the loud and ever present static of dominant culture, constant vigilance, one’s own liberation, the liberation of others, etc. to learn how to think otherwise.
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STEM and Sexism: Pedagogical Responses to “Chilly Climates” by Sara Frykenberg
Another way to put this: there is nothing inherently competitive about the study of mathematics. The classroom is competitive in order to create a particular kind of graduate—one who engages in a particular [dominant] culture. Liberative pedagogy challenges the ways that classrooms are run in order to challenge the dominant culture.
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Breastfeeding and the Abject? by Sara Frykenberg
The trappings of motherhood are all too powerful reminders that, as Catherine Keller reminds us in her book From a Broken Web, mother goddesses have to be continually slain for patriarchal heroes to be born. Indeed, she suggests that conceptions of Western selfhood are based upon this symbolic matricide—so it is no wonder that breast milk might be considered abject…
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Feminism and “The Force:” Thinking Through “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” by Sara Frykenberg
Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), on the other hand, works to resist the call of the “light.” The Force Awakens puts emphasis on the villain’s perspective; and my question is, is this because many of us who are in the audience need to see how we are also like this villain?
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Birth and Community by Sara Frykenberg
My daughter Hazel was born on a November afternoon. Just over two weeks old, my own individual role as mother is too young to comment on much here—I am thinking too much and too little about what it means, adjusting… Read More ›
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What If a Woman Played That Role? “The Martian” and Gendered Space Heroes by Sara Frykenberg
Sci-fi fan that I am, I recently went to go see the film The Martian, after hearing overall good reviews from friends and family alike. A ‘stranded in space’ film, The Martian considers the plight of fictional astronaut Mark Watney… Read More ›
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“Cocks Not Glocks:” Protesting and the Phallus by Sara Frykenberg
In the past month, Feminism and Religion has posted important pieces regarding the serious debate in the United States over gun control in the wake of mass shootings at our schools, including “Its Okay to Kill Each Other,” by Kate… Read More ›
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Holding On Too Tightly by Sara Frykenberg
Raised in an evangelical, Protestant Christian tradition, I was repeatedly told that “God is love.” God is love. While much of my Christian experience was difficult and even abusive, I have always interpreted this teaching—while sometimes confusing to me, and… Read More ›
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Taking leave: How did you do it and how did it go? Sara Frykenberg
As I mentioned in my last post, I have been preoccupied this summer with many questions regarding pregnancy, becoming a mother, and how to mother while doing my “work” as a feminist. But next to my constantly changing physical reality… Read More ›
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Pregnant with Thoughts by Sara Frykenberg
I never liked the metaphorical use of the word “pregnant” as it tended to be used in the academy. Reading the “pregnant phrases,” of mostly men who were “pregnant with thought,” as a student, I felt angry by what I… Read More ›
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My Fanime Exploration of Fan Fiction—Questions of Consent and Erotic Expression
Every year, my husband, sister and I attend the Japanese animation convention Fanimecon in San Jose, CA. We cosplay, watch anime and peruse the various panels designed for fan entertainment and education. This year I was even lucky enough to… Read More ›
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Violent and Non-Violent Protest by Sara Frykenberg
For those of you who have read my blogs before, you may have gathered that my approach to justice-making is not entirely non-violent. Researching and writing about the movement away from abusive community paradigms in my dissertation, I argue that… Read More ›
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Who “Gets” to be a Feminist? by Sara Frykenberg
Last year a friend of mine who is also a professor, a professor of Philosophy, initiated an email conversation with me to casually dialogue and ask some questions about feminism, a topic about which he had only limited knowledge. During… Read More ›
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“‘A’ is for Adjunct:” National Adjunct Walkout Day #NAWD
On Wednesday February 25th, adjunct faculty across the United States walked out of their classrooms, and hosted teach-ins, lectures, film screenings and rallies, to protest the employment conditions faced by adjunct and all contingent faculty members of colleges and universities…. Read More ›
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Reconsidering Faith in the New Semester by Sara Frykenberg
Ironically—though if I’d really thought about it I should have expected this—I have found that my own experiences feeling lost, in-between and more despairingly, halfway, have proved my most useful tools for teaching a class about faith.
