Mennonite Life will partner with the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies to host a lecture about gender and media in two conservative communities on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, from 2 to 3:15 p.m. in the chapel at Brethren Village, 3009 Lititz Pike, Lititz.

Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities are associated with religious observance and a renunciation of worldly things. Investigation of women's relationship to media in these communities, however, reveals a more nuanced picture of the boundaries at play and women's roles in negotiating them. In this talk, Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar will draw on extensive interviews with women in both traditions to compare how they do or do not use contemporary media technology.

Neriya-Ben Shahar is a senior lecturer at Sapir Academic College in Sderot, Israel, where she teaches communications, religion, and gender. She received her doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has been a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow. Her book, "Strictly Observant: Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women Negotiating Media," is forthcoming.

This event is free of charge and requires no registration.