Guadalupe Across Generations:

Catholic devotionalism, body politics, and lived religion among Mexican-origin women

My book project provides a grounded ethnographic-based sociological analysis of women’s devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe (Guadalupe, thereafter). My project challenges the conventional academic literature, which argues that religion is and has been influential in the oppression of women; particularly through the manipulation of symbols like Guadalupe. My research reveals that ordinary Catholic Mexican-origin women (ordinary women, thereafter) are socialized into a well-defined Catholic imaginary via religious cultural symbols and practices they have inherited from their mothers and grandmothers. However, as these women develop a consciousness, they affirm, challenge and in some cases transcend limiting notions of what Guadalupe represents and what it means to be Catholic and female at the intersection of systems of domination. Therefore, Catholicism among Latinas is not a simple matter of empowerment and disempowerment; their experiences are far more complex and multilayered as my study will seek to argue and demonstrate.