The Complexity of Conversion - Intersectional Perspectives on Religious Change in Antiquity and Beyond - Valérie Nicolet
Creating a New Sex: Women Bodies in Conversion
The Complexity of Conversion - Intersectional Perspectives on Religious Change in Antiquity and Beyond - Valérie Nicolet
Valérie Nicolet [+]
Institut protestant de théologie, faculté de Paris
Since 2013, Valérie Nicolet is “maître de conférences” at the Institut protestant de théologie, faculté de Paris, where she teaches New Testament and Ancient Greek. In her research, she focuses on the Pauline letters. At the moment, she is working on the rhetorical construction of the law in Galatians. Her scholarship highlights interdisciplinary approaches, more prominently with philosophy, and recently, with queer theory. She has published a book on the construction of the self in Romans (Constructing the Self: Thinking with Paul and Michel Foucault, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2012).
Description
In the book of Acts, one finds conversions of individuals, in the sense defined by William James at the beginning of the 20th century. These personal conversions are sometimes coupled with the baptism of the household surrounding each single individual. Relying on reflections on the body inspired by Judith Butler, this contribution imagines how conversion can impact the silent, invisible and nameless bodies mentioned in stories of household conversion. This article looks at the way conversion affects gender and how conversion can inform a theoretical reflection on agency, subjectivity and power.