Joan D. Koss-Chioino and Philip Hefner's new volume is unique in exploring the meaning of spiritual transformation and healing with new research from a scientific perspective. An interdisciplinary group of contributors-anthropological, psychological, medical, theological, and biological scientists-investigate the role of religious communities and healing practitioners, with spiritual transformation as their medium of healing. Individual authors evaluate the meaning of spiritual transformations and the consequences for those who experience it; the contributions of indigenous healing systems; new frameworks for neurological and physiological correlates of transformative religious experiences; the support from neuroscience for the radical empathy and intersubjective exchange that takes place in healing practices; and evidence for universal elements of the healing process. This exciting new book will be an invaluable resource for those generally interested in the role of religion in society, across the sciences, social sciences, and all religious traditions. With a foreword by Solomon H. Katz.

Joan D. Koss-Chioino and Philip Hefner's new volume is unique in exploring the meaning of spiritual transformation and healing with new research from a scientific perspective. An interdisciplinary group of contributors-anthropological, psychological, medical, theological, and biological scientists-investigate the role of religious communities and healing practitioners, with spiritual transformation as their medium of healing. Individual authors evaluate the meaning of spiritual transformations and the consequences for those who experience it; the contributions of indigenous healing systems; new frameworks for neurological and physiological correlates of transformative religious experiences; the support from neuroscience for the radical empathy and intersubjective exchange that takes place in healing practices; and evidence for universal elements of the healing process. This exciting new book will be an invaluable resource for those generally interested in the role of religion in society, across the sciences, social sciences, and all religious traditions. With a foreword by Solomon H. Katz.

In this uniquely personal account of the lives and healing arts of female shamans in northern Peru, the author alternates diaristic writings about her own experiences with ethnographic description. Her analytical essays explore the concepts of sorcery, shamanism, and witchcraft, case studies of Peruvian women and their ritual healing techniques, the healers' religious and symbolic space, and the healing attributes unique to women. They alternate with chapters in which Glass-Coffin describes her introduction to Peru as a high school student, the traditional roles she adopted in her host family, the crisis that rocked her identity, her first ritual contact with a female healer, and her own tumultuous but ultimately rewarding healing journey under two female shamans. Male shamans, she concludes, sally forth into the spirit world to do individual combat with the sources of spiritual illness, whereas female shamans try to involve their patients more directly in their own healing.

Each of us has a narrative compass, a story that has guided our lifework. In this extraordinary collection, women scholars from a variety of disciplines identify and examine the stories that have inspired them, haunted them, and shaped their research, from "Little House on the Prairie" to "Little Women," from the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" to Nancy Drew, "Mary Jane, " and even the Chinese memoir "Jottings from the Transcendant's Abode at Mt. Youtai." Telling the "story of her story" leads each of the essayists to insights about her own approach to studying narratives and to a deeper, often surprising, understanding of the power of imagination.

Contributors are Deyonne Bryant, Minjie Chen, Cindy L. Christiansen, Beverly Lyon Clark, Karen Coats, Wendy Doniger, Bonnie Glass-Coffin, Betsy Hearne, Joanna Hearne, Ann Hendricks, Rania Huntington, Christine Jenkins, Kimberly Lau, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Maria Tatar, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Roberta Seelinger Trites, Claudia Quintero Ulloa, and Ofelia Zepeda.