Religion in Culture Lecture

At 3:30 p.m. on February 22, 2006, Prof. Darlene Juschka, Program Coordinator of the Women's Studies Program (and cross-listed to Religious Studies) at the University of Regina (Saskatchewan, Canada), and editor of Feminism in the Study of Religion: A Reader, delivered the semester's inaugural Religion in Culture Lecture in the Henry Jacobs Reading Area at Gorgas Library. (For more on her previous day's Religion in Culture Lunchtime Discussion, please visit this page.) Her visit to Tuscaloosa was co-sponsored by the University of Alabama's Department of Women's Studies.

Click the logo to visit our Department of Women's Studies.

Prof. Juschka's lecture, entitled, "Sexing the Gods: Gender, Sex, and Sexuality," examined how human systems of belief employ ideologies, involving notions of gender-sex, to organize people's "worlds"--a shorthand term for the various cognitive and socio-political environments within which human communities exist. Because an element of such worlds are differing human conceptions of deities, Juschka argued that the manner in which these deities are imagined and represented (evident through studying a group's beliefs and their symbolic systems) can be a key to studying their gender-sex ideologies. Moreover, if such worlds are not homogenous but, instead, are comprised of potentially competing sets of interests, then, as she suggested, it is crucial to link systems of belief to systems of politics, allowing scholars to study the means by which social norms of specific worlds are reproduced or challenged.

Drawing on evidence from the classical period of Mayan civilization (400-1000 CE), Juschka--whose own training is in Classics, Anthropology, and Religious Studies--argued that, from hieroglyphic writings that have survived (i.e., the majority of books and codices were burned by the Spanish, but four codices survived, among which are the creation tale entitled Popol Vul [a painted scene from which is pictured across the top of this page] and the collection known as Chilam Balam), along with such archeological evidence as inscriptions, monuments, and pictographs, we can tell that, though hierarchically arranged, social identity in the Mayan world was determined by four sequentially arranged factors: 1. house-lineages (ones place in relation to other houses); 2. male and female persons within each house-lineage; 3. age; and 4. gender. Ones gender, Juschka observed, was the last, and therefore least prominent, of these four ways in which social status and identity were determined in this ancient world, suggesting that the prominence given to gender in the modern Euro-North American world is not necessarily a cross-cultural universal but may, instead, be a specific feature of our world's gender ideology.

If Mayan social status was not primarily determined by gender, then noble women and men (note the appearance of this class designation) both shared in social power because it depended in large part on such other factors as the house of which they were a member and their age. However, gender in the Mayan world did signify (that is, carry meaning): the power that a women could exercise was under the auspices of her senior lineage male relative (determined either through birth or marriage).

Temple at the Mayan city of Chichen Itza. Click the image to learn more.

The Mayan gender-sex ideological system, then, seems to have represented femaleness and femininity to be necessary, complementary, and contributory to the overall social body. In other words, it was, as with male and masculine, understood (i.e., coded) in a positive manner and was not understood as a detriment--as femaleness and femininity have been represented in those cultures and historic periods in which it is understood as lacking positive characteristics possessed only by males. Therefore, ancient Mayan (noble) women and girls contributions can be seen all throughout their social body, e.g., in Mayan ritual, economics, and politics.

Carving of Yaxchilan Queen with ritual bowl. Click the image to learn more about this Mayan city.

Prof. Juschka concluded that scholars cannot hope to adequately know about a people's system of belief unless they examine their gender-sex ideology--examining it in relation to other social categories such as economics, politics, and shifting ideas of what it means to be an individual.

Interested in learning more about Mayan archeological evidence?

Or the Mayan calendar?

Or are you interested in an introduction to gender theory?

Approximately forty people attended the talk and reception, many of whom were from Women's Studies and REL. A number of them were also present the following day for lunch with Prof. Juschka.

The Mayans lived in the eastern third of Mesoamerica, primarily on what we today know as the Yucatan Peninsula (toward the north).

After her lecture and after showing slides of artifacts from ancient Mayan culture, Prof. Juschka answered questions concerning how gender was designated and the social implications of gender to the Mayans.

The Mayan "mother-father": a male rule portrayed in female costume. Click the image to learn more about Mayan women's roles.

Prof. Juschka's visit to campus was co-sponsored by Women's Studies; picture above is Prof. Ida Johnson (right), Chair of WS, and Prof. Jennifer Purvis.

A small reception followed the lecture; REL major Zach Price (far right) dives in.

Thanks goes to Betty Dickey and Donna Martin, for arranging for this event. Also, thanks to Samantha Sastre for taking photos and for her computer troubleshooting expertise.