Religious Transformation and Cultural Narratives

This article reviews Religion, Gender and Race in Western European Arts and Culture: Thinking through religious transformation by Nella van den Brandt, a work that critically investigates women’s religious transformations at the intersection of religion, race and gender. The author explores how religious change—such as conversion, intensifying one’s faith or disengagement—manifests in film, literature and other cultural forms. Van den Brandt unravels the underlying perceptions of religion, gender and race that authors, scriptwriters and filmmakers have through a (comparative) analysis of different genres of cultural works. Foregrounding an intersectional lens, the author reflects on how narratives on religious transformation challenge dominant secular and racialized discourses in West-Europe in various ways. This book offers valuable insights in constructed narratives on religious transformation, although reflection on genre and audiences could have enriched the analysis. Overall, this book is a significant contribution to scholarship on religious transformation and understandings of religion, gender and race

Biology · History of religions · Linguistics · Narrative · Sociology · Anthropology · History · Philosophy · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies