Jewels of authority

"In recent years, scholarship on the religious experiences of women has flourished. In the study of Hinduism much of this work has been at a fairly general level, exploring such basic issues as power relations between the sexes, the codification of gender behavior, and contest over gender behavior. The essays in this volume seek to introduce a higher level of theoretical analysis by means of close readings of situations in which women are given or denied authority in ritual and interpretive contexts. This approach encompasses not only how women are represented, but also particular strategies of debate about women, how women are depicted as negotiating certain kinds of authority, and how women might resist traditional authority in specific colonial and post colonial situations."--Jacket.