Announcement
Nandini Deo’s new book Postsecular Feminisms: Religion and Gender in a Transnational Context
is an edited collection on Religion, Gender, and Politics. It explores the contested relationship
between feminism and secularism through a series of case studies, featuring perspectives from
the global North and South. It offers insights beyond those of the Abrahamic traditions, and
includes multiple examples from South Asia. By decentering the European
experience, Postsecular Feminisms shows how secularism and feminism have been constituted
in North America, South Asia, and Anglophone West Africa.
The book asks: can postsecular feminism offer a way to think about religion and gender so as to
support women in all the variety of their lived experiences? The contributors show that
postsecular feminism is a variety of feminism that is not necessarily either secularist or anti-
secular. Rather it is feminism informed by a history of secularist bias within liberal
feminism. Postsecular Feminisms explores both the potentials and pitfalls of postsecular
feminisms, with some authors arguing that a contextually grounded praxis is possible, while
others make a strong case against postsecular feminism as theory and practice.
The book includes chapters by Lehigh colleagues William Bulman in History and Khurram
Hussain from Religion Studies. The original conversations that developed into this book were
held as part of the CAS Dean’s Dialogue conference on Feminisms Beyond the Secular. Videos
from that gathering are available to the public.