Darlene Juschka – The Center for Critical Research on Religion

Darlene Juschka

Darlene Juschka is a retired Associate Professor in Gender, Religion and Critical Studies at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan Canada. Her work is multidisciplinary with a BA in Classical Studies, a MA in ritual studies ancient and modern, and a PhD in the Phenomenology of Religion (ritual, myth, and symbol) and religion and feminism. She has currently working on a new text, a poststructural analysis of the concept of pain in the Eurowest. She is also Co-investigator and provincial lead for Saskatchewan on the SSHRC/CURA funded research project “Rural and northern community response to Intimate Partner Violence.”

Books

Contours of the Flesh: The Semiotics of Pain. London and New York: Equinox Press. 2021.

Listening to the Beat of Our Drum: Indigenous Parenting in a Contemporary Society (edited by Carrie Bourassa, Elder Betty Mckenna, and Darlene Juschka). Demeter Press. 2017

Political Bodies, Body Politic: The Semiotics of Gender. London and New York: Equinox December 2009/10

Chinese Translation: Nanjin, China: Pheinix Publishing and Media Inc. 2015

Kindle version. Toronto & New York: Routledge. 2014

Feminism in the Study of Religion: A Reader, (ed.). Continuum. June, 2001

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

2022. Juschka, Darlene. “Space Aliens and Deities Compared.” Twelve Years of Studying Religious Contacts at the KHK: Stepping Back and Looking Ahead. Frederik Elwert, Maren Freudenberg, Tim Karis, Martin Radermacher, and Jens Schlamelcher (eds.). Leiden: Brill Publishers

2022. Juschka, Darlene. “The ontological and zoomorphic semiotics of two Hellenistic saviour deities compared.” In Sarah Rollens and Pat Hart (eds.), Worth More than Many Sparrows Essays in Honour of Willi Braun. Studies in Ancient Religion and Culture. London and New York: Equinox Press.

2020. Juschka, Darlene, Mary R. Hampton, Melissa Wuerch, and Tracy Knutson. “Interpersonalviolence in northern Saskatchewan communities: A case study.” In Brenda Anderson, Wendee Kubik, and May R. Hampton (eds.). Global Femicide: Indigenous Women and Girls Torn from our Midst. 2nd Ed. University of Regina, Open Press Books.

2020. Juschka, Darlene. “The Construction of Gendered Identities in Myth and Ritual.” In Teresa Meade and Merry E Wiesner-Hanks (eds.). Companion to Global Gender History (2nd edition). Wiley Blackwell Companions to World History Series. Nov/Dec.

2019. Feminisms and the study of religion in the 21st century. Berlin Journal of Critical Theory. Vol. 3, No. 2 (April), 5-26

2018. Guest Editor, Special Issue Feminisms and the study of “religions”. Religions, Vol 9. https://www.mdpi.com/si/10309

2018. Faller, Y. N., Wuerch, M. A., Hampton, M. R., Barton, S., Fraehlich, C., Hungler, K., Juschka, D., Moffitt, P., Zederayko, A. “A web of disheartenment with hope on the horizon: Intimate partner violence in rural and northern communities.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/0886260518789141

2017. Feminist approaches to the study of religion. In Richard King, (ed.), Religion, Theory, Critique: Classic and Contemporary Approaches. New York: Columbia University Press, 309-322.

2017. Darlene Juschka. “Indigenous women and reproductive justice – A narrative” in Carrie Bourassa, Betty McKinnon and Darlene Juschka (eds.) Listening to the beat of our drum. Demeter Press.

2016. Wuerch, Melissa, Zorn, Kim, Juschka, Darlene and Mary Hampton. “Responding to Intimate Partner Violence: Challenges Faced among Service Providers in Northern Communities” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, (May), 1-21.

2016. Feminism and Gender. The (Oxford) handbook of the study of religion. Steven Engler and Michael Stausberg (eds.). UK: Oxford.

2016. Arousing the Past. Review of Masterson (M.), Rabinowitz (N.S.), Robson (J.) (eds.) Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World. Pp. xx + 567, ills. London and New York: Routledge. The Classical Review 67.1 (April). 2017. Online Sept 2016.

2014. Kubik, W., Hampton, M., Juschka, D. Bourassa, C., Jeffery, B. Talking to the ‘Healing Journey’ Interviewers: Ethical Concerns and Dilemmas, 15-29. In Journeys in Community-Based Research. Regina: Saskatchewan Population Health Evaluation and Research Unit. Regina, SK: University of Regina Press.

2014. Enfleshing semiotics: The indexical and symbolic sign-functions. Religion. Volume 44, Issue 1. Online publication Dec 16, 2013

2013. The category of gender in the study of religion. In Aaron W. Hughes (ed.) Theory and method in the study of religion: Twenty five years on, 231-238. Leiden, Boston: Brill.

2013. Religious Studies and identity politics: mythology in the making. In Scott Elliot (ed.) Reinventing Religious Studies: Key writings in the history of a discipline, 210-217. Durham, UK: Acumen Publishing.

2012. “Fixed geomorphologies and the shifting sands of time.” In William Arnal, Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.), Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion: Essays in Honor of Donald Wiebe. London and New York: Equinox Press. In Press.

2011. “Pain, Gender, and Systems of Belief and Practice.” Religion Compass 5 (11):709-719. 2011. “Feminisms in the study of systems of beliefs and practice.” In Lesley Biggs and Pamela Downe(eds.).Gendered intersections: An introduction to Women*s and Gender Studies. 2nd ed. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.

2010. The Amazon, Rhetor, and Priest: Feminism, Politics and Religion.E-International Relations. October 16.

2010. Hampton, Mary, Kubik, Wendee, Juschka, Darlene, Bourassa, Carrie, and Woods, Meghan. “Resolved to end violence in our society.” In A.Brenda Anderson, Wendee Kubik, and Mary R. Hampton (eds.), Torn From Our Midst: Voices of Grief, Healing and Action from the Missing Indigenous Women Conference 2008, 221-233. Regina, SK: University of Regina, CPRC press.

2009. “Penetrating the Body of the Masculine *Other*: White US Masculinity, War, and the Ritual of Truth.” In The CSSR Bulletin 38 (4) (November): 1-6.

2009. “Gender.” In John Hinnells (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, 2nd edition. 225-238. London and New York: Routledge.

2007. “Masculinity.” In James T. Sears (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality through History, Vol. 6, The Modern World, 146-150. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.

2007. “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down: Waking up in Women’s Studies.” In Mathieu Courville (ed.), The Next Step in Studying Religion A Graduate’s Guide, 157-168. London: Continuum.

2006. “Interdisciplinarity in Religious and Women’s Studies.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses. 35(3-4): 389-399. 2005. “Spectacles of Gender: Enacting the Masculine in Ancient Rome and Modern Cinema.” Religious Studies and Theology, Special Volume: Materializing Roman Religion, Guest Editor Lisa Hughes, 24 (1) : 75-110.

2005. “Gender.” In John Hinnells (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion. 225-238. London and New York: Routledge.

2004. “Cladistics, Morphologies, Taxonomies and the Comparative Study of Religion.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 16 (1): 12-23.

2003. “The Writing of Ethnography: Magical Realism and Michael Taussig.” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 4 (4): 84-105.

2003. “Whose Turn is it to Cook?: Victor Turner’s Communitas and Pilgrimage Questioned.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 36 (4): 189-204.

2002. “Feminist Christian Theological Engagements with Symbol, Myth and Ritual.” ARC, The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies (McGill) 30: 7-33.

2001. “A Nod in the General Direction of…: Gender in the Study of Religion.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses. 30 (2):215-222.

2001. “Disney and Fundamentalism: The Fetishization of the Family and the Production of American Family Values.” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 2 (1): 21-39.

2000. Darlene Jusckha and Stephan Dobson. “Levi-Strauss.” In Charles Winquist and Victor E. Taylor (eds). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge, 301-303.

Exposé/Interviews

Saskatchewan Update: Rural and Northern Community Responses to Intimate Partner Violence. RESOLVE news. Vol 16, 4 (Dec) 2014, 4.

Saskatchewan Update: Rural and Northern Community Responses to Intimate Partner Violence. RESOLVE news. Vol 16, 2 (May) 2014, 4.

Critical Questions Series 2 In the second installment of the Critical Questions Series, we ask scholars of religion how they negotiate the difficult line between “politics” and scholarship. Feb 20, 2013

Political Bodies and a Touch of Pain: An Interview with Darlene Juschka by Matt Sheedy. Bulletin for the study of religion, vol 42, No. 1 (2013)

Reports

Darlene Juschka, Melissa A. Wuerch, Mary R. Hampton, Kaitlyn Giles, Jenna Tickell, Wendee Kubik, and Erin Knuttila (2018). Saskatchewan Report: Rural and northern response to intimate partner violence. RESOLVE SK, University of Regina, SK

Book Reviews

2018. Playing with power: Ritual and its affirmation and disaffirmation. Hüsken, Ute and Udo Simon (eds.) (2016). The ambivalence of denial” Danger and appeal of rituals. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag. 315 pgs. Anthropos (March).

2017. Arousing the Past. Review of Masterson (M.), Rabinowitz (N.S.), Robson (J.) (eds.) Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World. Pp. xx + 567, ills. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. The Classical Review 67(1 )(April). Online Sept 2016.

2014. Review of Dancing culture religion. Sam Gill. Lexington Books, 2012. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82(4): 1155-1158.

2013. Review of The cult of divine birth in ancient Greece. Marguerite Rigogliosos. Palgrave Macmillan , 2009. Theology & Sexuality 19(2): 187-188.

Research Projects

“Contours of the Flesh: The Semiotics of Pain” (Working Title): In the Eurowest pain is discursively framed as something that elides discourse and therefore is understood to be outside language. In this framing, pain, as outside language, is given asocial and ahistorical status understood as it is to be beyond human construction. Indeed played out in systems of belief and practice, pain acts as a medium for reciprocal relations with the metaphysical other since it too is understood as originating and sharing a part in the “authentic” or “real” from which the metaphysical, and therefore truth, is understood to emerge. Understood as part of this domain pain is located in close relation with truth, and therefore understood to be a means to truth; hence torture to secure the truth. This book, then, seeks to make visible the discursive formation of pain, its social and political roots, and its historical contingencies.

Co-applicant, ALL Rise Project Inc. 2015-2016. Community check-up: Identifying barriers to economic participation of Aboriginal Women in Urban Settings. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. This project now completed was a participatory action research project analyzing the systemic causes and barriers of employment of Indigenous women in Regina.

Rural and Northern Community Response To Intimate Partner Violence. 2016 Stops to violence fall member gathering, Wanuskewin, SK. Oct 14, 2016

Ancient Spartan Masculinity and pain. Religious Studies Student Symposium, University of Manitoba, April 27, 2016
With Mary Hampton, “Rural and Northern Community Response to Intimate Partner Violence.” Community-Based Research Showcase, November 6, 2015 Regina SK.

With Kaitlyn Giles. Focus groups: Sharing and intersecting narratives of intimate partner violence in Saskatchewan. RESOLVE Research Day October 22, 2015, Regina, SK

Paper Presentations at Conferences and Events

“Space Aliens and Deities Compared.” Step Back and Look Beyond: Studying Religion after 2020. Center for Religious Studies (CERES), Ruhr University Bochum. Germany March 11-13, 2020. (Invited, but postponed due to COVID)

“The intersection of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.” Keynote for the Saskatchewan Sexual Assault Services Annual Leadership Forum. Feb, 7, 2019
Saskatchewan Report: Rural and northern response to intimate partner violence. RESOLVE Research Day, October 19. 2018

“We are what we eat: The ontology/being of the everyday”, panel: Food Security: The politics of Food. Indigenous Research Studies Week, University of Regina, September 27, 2018

Roundtable: Author meets critics – Religion and Intimate partner violence: Understanding challenges and proposing solutions, Canadian Society for the study of religion. Congress May 27, 2018

With Mary Hampton, “Rural and Northern Community Response to Intimate Partner Violence”. Community-Based Research Showcase, November 6, 2015 Regina SK.

With Kaitlyn Giles “Focus groups: Sharing and intersecting narratives of intimate partner violence in Saskatchewan.” RESOLVE Research Day October 22, 2015, Regina, SK

“Intersectionality for Beginners.” Youth Action Summit 2015, May 2, 2015. First Nations University, Regina, SK

“The Rhythm of the Saints.” Unitarian Fellowship of Regina Inc., Feb 15, 2015.

With Mary Hampton, “Mapping Parameters and Gaps: Rural and Northern Response to Intimate Partner Violence.” RESOLVE Research Day. October 6th, 2014, Winnipeg, MB.

Rural and Northern Community Response to Intimate Partner Violence – An SSHRC-CURA funded project. URFA Status of Women Brown Bag Lunch, Jan 30 2014, 1pm