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This doctoral thesis seeks to elucidate the relationship between the fin de siecle Anglo-Jewish writing of Amy Levy and Lily Montagu and Second-Wave Jewish feminist theory and activism. The thesis does not claim that Second-Wave feminists were wholly unaware of this earlier stage of activism, but rather that the conceptual - as opposed to historical - links between the two phases are under-examined. Accordingly, the thesis calls into question assumptions that the rise of Jewish feminist theology can be predominantly situated in 1970s America through the work of Rachel Adler, Marcia Falk, and Judith Plaskow. Instead, the study demonstrates that the possibility of Jewish feminist theology, and aspects of Jewish feminist spirituality and theory, should also be traced to England, particularly in Levy's midrashic poetry, and Montagu's figuration of the feminine aspect of the divine presence, the Shekhinah. This hypothesis is substantiated first by locating the writing and activism of Amy Levy and Lily Montagu within their historical context, and in doing so, seeks to challenge historiographical estimations of Levy's religiosity, and assumptions about the marginality of Montagu's role in the rise of Liberal Judaism. In opposition to much of the extant historiography, the thesis demonstrates that Levy's writing is less anti-Judaic and more profoundly inflected by the religious concerns of German Reform Judaism than has previously been supposed. While Levy incorporates aspects of the religious tradition such as Messianic redemption, Montagu, rather than being intellectually reliant on Claude Montefiore, developed proto-feminist theological discourse utilising both the rabbinic and mystical traditions. Both of these women's writings constitute a genre whose female subjectivity evidences a concern for justice and authority that prefigures numerous aspects of Second-Wave Jewish feminist theory and its spiritual, theological, and theoretical underpinnings. As this abstract suggests, my research invites some reappraisal of Amy Levy as an alienated Anglo-Jewish woman unable to locate the divine presence in the tradition, or in the Reform and Orthodox institutions of her day, yet unwilling to compromise her spirituality, or for that matter, her Jewishness. Likewise, my study encourages reassessment of Lily Montagu - her theological writing, her activism, and her role in the Liberal Jewish movement- demonstrating that, like Levy, she was unable to locate the divine presence in a purely masculinist theology, and was as much concerned as Levy to broaden the definition of Jewish spirituality to incorporate the needs and aspirations of assimilated women estranged by the androcentrism of the tradition's sacred texts, liturgies, and halakhic practice.

Despite enduring differences between the Abrahamic traditions Islam, Christianity and Judaism, women of these faiths have a shared experience of exclusion from institutional theological enterprises, where women are depicted as silent subjects of faith. This thesis considers women as speaking subjects in the Qur'an within a literary reading to explore an Abrahamic interfeminist dialogue. The thesis compares how women's subjectivity has been interpreted historically in traditional Islamic scholarship with modem feminist deconstruction of androcentric language, in order to consider how women are presented as addressees of the text. Female speaking roles are explored through the language of dispute (jadala) as a thematic feature of the Qur'an, with the surah-title al-mujadilah, 'she who disputes', as pivotal character. The thesis draws on recent literary scholarship that has called for a canonical understanding of the text, whereby the Qur'an is viewed as a literary unit wherein formal structure is seen to have religious significance. The Qur'anic terms of gender and debate are read as part of an internal Qur'anic semiology that develops from the earlier to the later Qur'anic chapters through the expression of Qur'anic Sign. The chronological consideration of the Qur' an's terms of debate presented a model that critiques women's exclusion from the theological process as revealed knowledge while affirming their inclusion in the revelatory scheme not only for the Muslim addressee of Scripture, but for her Jewish and Christian counterparts as well. The thesis thus presents a novel approach of reading biblical texts in light of a Qur'anic model as an Abrahamic theology of women who speak.

This thesis contributes to a small but growing body of academic research that is concerned with the late twentieth and early twenty-first century religion of Goddess feminism and the religio-political discourse of thealogy. Current academic approaches to Goddess feminism have been primarily historical, -- I- phenomenological, psychological and sociological studies that have presented descriptive and/or functional accounts of this religion. Relatively little academic work has emerged from within Goddess feminism. Still less has attempted to delineate the meaning of a female/feminist deity and religious worldview in a philosophical manner. This thesis attends to these areas of academic neglect by combining philosophical concems and methods with a position of thealogical advocacy. By developing a thealogical reading of the principal reality-claims embedded within a number of influential Goddess feminist texts it is, I propose, possible to address philosophical questions that have not, as yet, been confronted by Goddess feminists, and also theorize the contours and coherence of what may be termed a feminist metaphysic. Most Goddess feminists, I contend, presently emphasize the affective, experiential and performative dimensions of their religion, to the detriment or exclusion of the conceptual, philosophical and metaphysical. I argue in this thesis that there are no compelling reasons why Goddess feminists should reject philosophy and metaphysics. There are, rather, good political, practical and religious reasons for feminist thealogians, to produce an alternative metaphysic of deity and the world to those deployed by patriarchy. Throughout this constructive work of thealogy recurrent Goddess feminist models, myths and reality-claims, such as those of the cosmogonic womb, the cycling processes of Birth-Death-Rebirth, and the web of life, are conceptually unpacked, developed and elucidated so as to provide a comprehensive thealogical, and thereby metaphysical, account of the fundamental organization of reality and the human condition. The originality and significance of this thesis lies in its elaboration of a feminist metaphysical account of the Goddess as nature, Goddess/Naturet,h, at has largely been assumedr ather than articulated by most Goddess feminists. I conclude that although it is not, as yet, possible to articulate a complete Goddess feminist metaphysical theory, it is possible to develop a philosophical and systematic thealogy that delineates the primary metaphysical commitments and reality-claims implicit within Goddess feminist discourse in a coherent manner. This thesis is a prolegomena to future works of philosophical thealogy and feminist metaphysical theorizing.