Becoming Orthodox: Women, Religion, and Ethnicity in the American South (Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought)

An exploration of an embodied, practice-centered, and continuous process through which Orthodox Christian women in the American South cultivate a compelling religious womanhood. Becoming Orthodox is a multi-lingual, ethnographic study of two Orthodox Christian communities in the U.S.Utilizing interview material, participant observation, and participant participation, Kravchenko argues that Russian women who immigrate to the United States and American women who convert to Orthodox Christianity engage with the materiality and visuality of the Orthodox Church to embrace conservative gender roles of a patriarchal tradition in a way that propels them to actively advocate for the equality, freedom, and empowerment of women. Becoming Orthodox adds a new angle to the literature on the conservative religious women because of its attention to the intersection of religion, gender, and ethnicity.By attending to how Russian immigrant and American convert women - in the midst of their simultaneously