Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program presents “Gender and Religion: A Conversation About Two Books with Two Authors.”
Wednesday, September 16th, 2026 | 3:00-4:30 pm | Mather House 100
Dr. Justine Howe and Dr. Jue Liang will be in conversation with each other about their newly published books, both of which explore the relationship between gender and religion in fresh and fascinating ways.
Dr. Howe’s latest book Maryam Jameelah and the Global Muslim Imagination (Princeton, 2026) explores the unlikely journey of Maryam Jameelah (1934–2012)—born Margaret Marcus in White Plains, New York—from comfortable suburban childhood to influential voice of the twentieth-century global Islamic Revival. Jameelah’s more than twenty books and pamphlets, translated into a dozen languages, were notable for their unrelenting critique of modernity and arguments for the superiority of Islam in opposition to the West. The book shows how Jameelah harnessed negative emotions to call attention to what she saw as the catastrophes wrought by materialism and secularism. For Jameelah, galvanizing these emotions formed the basis of global Muslim solidarity that could be mobilized for a reinvigorated Islamic future.
Dr. Liang is the author of Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Early Literary Lives of the Buddhist Saint Yeshe Tsogyel (Oxford University Press, 2026), the first comprehensive study dedicated to the literary tradition surrounding Yeshe Tsogyel, the foremost matron saint of Tibetan Buddhism. The book traces the emergence and development of a rich body of narratives about Yeshe Tsogyel during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, focusing on the Tibetan Nyingma Buddhist tradition. Through careful textual analysis, the book constructs an emic (insider) Tibetan Buddhist theory of gender and female religious eminence, examining how Yeshe Tsogyel’s multifaceted identities embody a dialectic that shifts back and forth between Tibetan women’s social and cultural marginalization and a Buddhist discourse of soteriological inclusivity.
About the Speakers
Justine Howe is an associate professor of Religious Studies and the faculty director of the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women. She teaches courses on gender and Islam, the anthropology of religion, and religion and culture.
Jue Liang teaches in the Department of Religious Studies and is a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism. Her research and teaching engage with questions about continuities as well as innovations in the gender discourses of Buddhist communities. She is also interested in the theory and practice of translation in general, and translating Tibetan literature in particular.