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Article
Review of Women Who Fly: Goddesses, Witches, Mystics, And Other Airborne Females by Serinity Young
Nova Religio (2019)
  • Nancy Schultz, Salem State University
Abstract
Serinity Young’s Women Who Fly soars through place and time to survey the surprisingly ubiquitous trope of airborne women. Interdisciplinary and global in scope, this book covers a typology of flying females flourishing throughout the millennia in myth, literature, and art. Flying operates as a prism through which Young—a Research Associate at New York’s American Museum of Natural History—examines female power and subjection in cultures spread across varied geographical locations and periods. Women Who Fly begins with a meditation on the Louvre’s “Victory of Samothrace,” the awe-inspiring statue of Nike, Greek goddess of victory, with her powerful wings and thighs extending from a headless torso. For Young, aerial women offer a unifying lens through which to examine unexpected similarities in what would otherwise appear to be diverse world religions and cultures.
Publication Date
November, 2019
Citation Information
Nancy Schultz. "Review of Women Who Fly: Goddesses, Witches, Mystics, And Other Airborne Females by Serinity Young" Nova Religio Vol. 23 Iss. 2 (2019) p. 125 - 126 ISSN: 1092-6690
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/nancy-schultz/41/