A01=Lilith Mahmud
anthropology
Author_Lilith Mahmud
belonging
bias
brotherhood
Category=JBSF1
Category=JBSX
Category=JHMC
Category=NHD
class
conservatism
culture
dan brown
discretion
discrimination
egalitarian
elite
enlightenment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
exclusion
exclusivity
feminism
fraternity
freemason
gender
history
humanism
initiation
insiders
italy
masonic lodge
masons
nonfiction
power
race
secrecy
secret societies
sisterhood
sociology
whiteness
women
Product details
- ISBN 9780226095721
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 28 Mar 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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From its traces in cryptic images on the dollar bill to Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, Freemasonry has long been one of the most romanticized secret societies in the world. But a simple fact escapes most depictions of this elite brotherhood: There are women Freemasons, too. In this groundbreaking ethnography, Lilith Mahmud takes readers inside Masonic lodges in contemporary Italy, where she observes the many ritualistic and fraternal bonds forged among women initiates of this elite and esoteric society. Offering a tantalizing look behind lodge doors, The Brotherhood of Freemason Sisters unveils a complex culture of discretion in which Freemasons simultaneously reveal some truths and hide others. Women - one of Freemasonry's best-kept secrets - are often upper class and highly educated but paradoxically antifeminist, and their self-cultivation through the Masonic path is an effort to embrace the deeply gendered ideals of fraternity. Mahmud unravels this contradiction at the heart of Freemasonry: how it was at once responsible for many of the egalitarian concepts of the Enlightenment and yet has always been, and in Italy still remains, extremely exclusive.
The result is not only a thrilling look at an unfamiliar-and surprisingly influential-world, but a reevaluation altogether of the modern values and ideals that we now take for granted.
Lilith Mahmud is assistant professor of women's studies and anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.
