Male and female created them: towards a reading "against the tide" of the story, gender and religion

Abstract

This essay wishes to contribute to the existing historiographical debates regarding the particular relationship between Gender and Religion Studies, and the possibilities afforded by both disciplines for the advancement of our understanding of Spanish History and Spanish Catholicism. After considering the critical and hermeneutical potential of these two categories, we will cite and reflexively comment upon some of the most relevant work carried out by scholarship in recent years. In the last section of the article we will suggest the importance of adopting Walter Benjamin’s concept of reading “against the grain” in order to best conceptualize archival material in the study of Religion from the perspective of gender. We will finish by suggesting new potential fields of research with which to establish the current process of renewal of Spanish historiography in general, and, more concretely, of the study of Spanish Catholicism