One of the UK leading young theologians launched this year’s Queen’s Academic Lecture Programme with a fascinating talk 'Eve and the Women’s Movement'.
Dr Holly Morse, just returned from a major conference in Denver USA, focused on how the figure of Eve appears in the creation story in Genesis. She also spoke on how Eve has been interpreted by later thinkers and theologians as well as appearing frequently in popular culture - in films, advertising in literature.
‘Male writers have tended to see Eve as weaker and less rational than her male counterpart but my research has focused on how women have often interpreted the Eve figure very differently,” Dr Morse said.
Dr Morse went back to the early roots of feminism, covering the medieval writer Christine de Pisan who saw Eve much more positively and more as an equal to the man. “This thinker emphasised that Eve was created from the most perfect material that God had yet made - the body of man himself,” added Dr Morse. “Christine’s work was very popular in her day even though she was forgotten later on.” Dr Morse brought her talk up to date with a discussion of late 20th century feminism and the biblically-titled feminist magazine ‘Spare Rib’.
A-level RS student Alison Hughes said: “It was great to hear about these ideas and to have the chance to ask questions to a real expert.”