A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years Religious Exploration

Represents the major aspects of the author's work and provides an overview of her methodology in women's studies in religion and feminism. This work demonstrates how feminist scholars in the 1970s shifted the paradigm away from an androcentric model of humanity and forever changed the way we study religion. "Rita Gross is always a cutting edge mind. To bring this whole range of thought together is an important contribution. This is an important and distinctive work, and the scholarship is superior."—Rosemary Ruether, author of Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History (UC Press) Rita M. Gross has long been acknowledged as a founder in the field of feminist theology. One of the earliest scholars in religious studies to discover how feminism affects that discipline, she is recognized as preeminent in Buddhist feminist theology. The essays in "A Garland of Feminist Reflections" represent the major aspects of her work and provide an overview of her methodology in women's studies in religion and feminism. The introductory article, written specifically for this volume, summarizes the conclusions Gross has reached about gender and feminism after forty years of searching and exploring, and the autobiography, also written for this volume, narrates how those conclusions were reached. These articles reveal the range of scholarship and reflection found in Rita M. Gross' work and demonstrate how feminist scholars in the 1970s shifted the paradigm away from an androcentric model of humanity and forever changed the way we study religion.