Full Description
The Song of Songs is the only book of the Bible to privilege the voice of a woman, and its poetry of love and eroticism also bears witness to violence. How do the contemporary #MeToo movement and other movements of protest and accountability renew questions about women, gender, sex, and the problematic of the public at the heart of this ancient poetry? This edited volume seeks to reinvigorate feminist scholarship on the Song by exploring diverse contexts of reading, from Akkadian love lyrics, to Hildegard of Bingen, to Marc Chagall.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: The Song of Songs and Women's Voices
Elaine James and Simeon Chavel
Part 1: The Song of Songs: Literary and Theoretical Approaches
1 The Song of Songs and #MeToo
Critical Reading, Reparative Reading
Elaine James
2 Sex in Public in the Song of Songs
Rhiannon Graybill
3 The Speaker of the Song of Songs and Her Publics
Simeon Chavel
4 Speaking of the Other
Interest and Love in Song 5:2-8
Sarah Zhang
Part 2: The Song of Songs in Historical Contexts
5 The Song, Cixous, and écriture féminine
F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp
6 Female Voices in Akkadian Love Poetry
Martti Nissinen
7 Recovering Women from the Scholars (Even from Me)
Deborah Green
8 Singing the Song Anew
Hildegard of Bingen as Interpreter of the Song of Songs
Karl Shuve
9 Women's Voices and the Cost of Going Public
Song of Songs, Canonization and Safe Spaces
Anna Marsh
10 The Gendering of Sexual Agency
Case Studies from Song of Songs 8:5-14 and an Infamous Indian Trial
Havilah Dharamraj
11 Space and Regulation in the Song of Songs and Contemporary Sexual Politics
Yvonne Sherwood
12 Thinking with Pink
Affective and Sensate Readings of Marc Chagall's Song of Songs
Fiona Black
13 How to Read the Work of 'Great Artists Who Have Done Terrible Things'
Feminist and Womanist Biblical Scholarship and the #MeToo Debate on Cultural Texts of Terror
Karen V. Guth
Index
