Q. I am looking for theories that would include religion, gender, and power

Hi Christina,

To find theories that deal with gender, religion, and power, I did a search in a few databases that the library subscribes to (all available through the All Databases A-Z link on the library homepage.):

• Academic Search Complete
• Gender Studies Database
• PsycINFO

I searched for: theor* AND (gender OR women) AND (religio* OR synagogue OR jew*) AND power

(See an exapmle at http://screencast.com/t/taSoQHqP0E)

To break that down, AND makes sure that every term connected with an AND is included in the results, OR means that any terms connected with an OR will be returned, but not necessarily all of them, parentheses group terms together (like the order of operations), and asterisks* truncate words--they return all results that start with those letters up until the * (for example, religio* will return results with the words religion, religious, religiousness, and religiosity). So, "theory AND power" gets me results that have both of those words included. "Gender OR women" means that I get the results that include either term--this is helpful for expanding my results and pulling in things that would be missed if I only used one word to describe it. Does this all make sense?

This search brought me several articles that talk about theories that may be helpful to you (though I would recommend that you try searching in these databases yourself as well--you might spot something useful that didn't catch my attention). Here are some of the theories (and associated articles) that have to do with gender, religion, power, or all three:

• Erikson's Theory of Human Development
• An exploration of middle-aged and older women's experiences of bat mitzvah within the framework of Erikson's theory of human development--Note: this is a dissertation. Also, we don't have the full text available in the library so you would have to use InterLibrary Loan to get it. See this page for questions about ILL.
• Developmental Theory
• Adding the voices of Jewish girls to developmental theory
• Ambivalent Sexism Theory
• 'Blessed Is He Who Has Not Made Me a Woman': Ambivalent Sexism and Jewish Religiosity
• Self-in-relation Theory
• The voices of reformed jewish girls as viewed through the lens of self-in-relation theory
• Power Control Theory
• A Power-Control Theory of Gender and Religiosity
• Gender, Risk, and Religiousness: Can Power Control Provide the Theory?
• Feminist Theory
• INTRODUCTION: FEMINIST THEORY AND THE STUDY OF SOUTH ASIAN RELIGIONS
• Feminist theory and religious experience--Note: this is a chapter in a book that we don't have. You would have to use InterLibrary Loan to get this.
• Critical Theory
• Religions, Orientation and Critical Theory: Race, Gender and Sexuality at the 1998 Lambeth Conference

Hope this helps! Feel free to write me back with any other questions.

Eleanor Johnson

Social Sciences Librarian

eleanorjohnson@unomaha.edu

402-554-3207