Pedagogies of the Sacred

Alexander's central question addresses the secularization of feminism and the dire need to address the sacred at a time when fundamentalism and political faith-based initiatives on the part of the state have emerged to appropriate the domain of the spiritual. Experience is an important dimension of daily life as well as an important category for feminism, but we have rendered it as if it were absent Spirit, understood it primarily as secularized and antithetical to the sacred. Using her own priestancy in two African-based spiritual communities of Vodun and Santeria, Alexander traces how experience, history, memory, consciousness, voice and agency customarily positioned as secular--are all readily intelligible within the precinct of the sacred. What would taking the sacred seriously mean for transnational feminism particularly because the majority of people in the world understand who they are in what they do through this prism? What would taking the sacred seriously mean for ourselves?

If you would like more information about co-sponsoring or helping out with this event and others like it, please contact CLGSA through Zamora at zamoram@stanford.edu.

***Crossings: Sexual, Spiritual, Transnational,Transgenerational*** M. Jacqui Alexander, Ph.D

For the past two decades, M. Jacqui Alexander has worked as teacher, scholar, activist and writer, crossing boundaries of geography, nationality, discipline and epistemology in so doing. She has lectured extensively in the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa; delivered numerous keynote conference addresses; facilitated workshops; taught seminars and summer day schools; and consulted and organized transnational conferences. Her awards include fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Ford and National Science Foundations and the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions. She is a member of the Caribbean Association of Feminist Research and Action and has served on the board of CLAGS, The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies.

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