Jesus in Our Wombs: Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent Paperback - 2005

First line

In medieval Europe, nunneries like the one I spent time in were believed to be special crucibles for the struggle between good and evil, a savage war waged in and through the medium of female flesh.

From the rear cover

"A stunning first book, Jesus In Our Wombs is a haunting ethnography with fresh theoretical insights. Blending psychoanalytic theories with postmodern imageries, Lester demonstrates that the body is both a source and object of analysis. This is a model ethnography."--Vicki Ruiz, author of From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in the Twentieth-Century America

"In Jesus In Our Wombs, Rebecca Lester uses her rich, evocative ethnography of the first year experiences of nuns-in-training to explore the formation and transformation of selves, the relationships of bodily practices, and the centrality of gender to these intertwined processes of self-formation and embodiment. This work will spark renewed interest in the potential of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theories of change to offer insights for crucial theoretical issues in anthropology and the social sciences more generally. A superb book."--Dorothy Hodgson, author of The Church of Women: Gendered Encounters between Maasai and Missionaries

"This study of young Mexican nuns in their first year of training is a thought provoking and ethnographically rich work that will be an important contribution to the anthropological study of religion, gender, and embodiment. Through her careful analysis of the ways the postulates negotiate their training intellectually, emotionally, and bodily, Lester provides unique insights into the religious processes of personal transformation. A beautifully observed ethnography of life in a Catholic convent."--Joel Robbins, author of Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society