Isabelle Graesslé

Isabelle Graesslé (born 23 February 1959) is a French born theologian, feminist and former museum director, based in Geneva. In 2004 she was appointed the first director of the International Reformation Museum which opened the next year in Geneva, but she resigned the post in 2016. It was indicated that her departure followed disagreement about levels of funding.

Life

The time she spent studying in Ohio was important in the development of a feminist context for Isabelle Graesslé's academic and pastoral work. "The United States enabled me to discover that an impressive number of women have impacted the history of Christianity, but then been ignored in subsequent historical research". Her doctorate, from the Protestant Theology Faculty at Strasbourg followed in 1988. She was supervised for her dissertation by Gilbert Vincent. Her topic was "Elements for a Rhetoric of Preaching: Readings of Athanase Josué Coquerel" ("Éléments pour une rhétorique de la prédication: Lectures d'Athanase Coquerel"). Her habilitation, obtained from the University of Bern in 2004, opened the way, potentially, to a lifelong university professorial career. The course she taught was entitled simply "Women and Religion" which enabled her to address a range of religious traditions that varied over the years, but always from the same starting points: discerning an ambivalent relationship between women and religion, the balance of tensions created within religious institutions by the new challenges presented by women's emancipation, and finally the preconception of a specific link between female sexuality and the prohibition on priesthood. It is apparent that there were some at the university who viewed Graesslé's approach with disfavour.

"On a beautiful Sunday in October, during my final year as moderator, when we unveiled the name of Marie Dentière on the Reformation Wall in Geneva, it was a victory over amnesia, contempt and envy! This great literary scholar of the sixteenth century, with her astonishing career and hardened character, whose reputation had been at best neglected and at worst traduced, was at last rehabilitated. An American university has even just published her output translated into English".

Output (selection)

La rhétorique entre bonne et mauvaise foi, Perspectives missionnaires No. 18, 1989. Reflections on European Feminist Theology, in Women's Visions. Theological Reflections, Celebration, Action. Herausgeberin: Ofelia Ortega, Genève, WCC, 1995. Les couples bibliques à la recherche du divin, Bulletin du CPE 2 (1996). La théologie féministe en Suisse. Dialogue avec Ina Praetorius, Jahrbuch der Europäischen Gesellschaft für Frauen in der theologischen Forschung No. 4, 1996. « Théologie et féminisme : de l'affrontement à l'embellie », , in Où va Dieu? Revue de l'université de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, éditions Complexes, 1999. Unterwegs zu neuen Horizonten. Bergs am Irchel, KiK-Verl., 2001 Pierre Bühler, Isabelle Graesslé, Christoph D. Müller (éds.), Qui a peur des homosexuel-les? Évaluation et discussion des prises de position des Églises protestantes de Suisse, Genève, Labor et Fides, 2001. Isabelle Graesslé, «Vie et légendes de Marie Dentière », Bulletin du Centre protestant d’études, vol. année 55, no 1, 2003 Johannes Calvin und die Reformation in Genf, Zurich, SJW, 2010. "La théologie féministe en Suisse. Dialogue avec Ina Praetorius " (1996). Yearbook of the European Society of Women in Theological Research, 4, pp. 116–128. " Théologie et féminisme : de l’affrontement à l’embellie " (1999). Où va Dieu ? Revue de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1, pp. 149–160. Qui a peur des homosexuel·le·s ? Évaluation et discussion des prises de position des Églises protestantes de Suisse (2001) (P. Bühler, I. Graessle et C. Müller). Genève : Labor et Fides. "Dieu masculin " (2002). In P. Gibert et D. Marguerat (dir.), Dieu, vingt-six portraits bibliques (pp. 113–122). Paris : Bayard. " Vie et légendes de Marie Dentière " (2003). Bulletin du CPE, 1. "L’ecclésiologie en héritage : de l’impasse au passage" (2003). Études Théologiques et Religieuses, 78 (3), pp. 351–366. Prier 7 Jours avec la Bible. L’Évangile de Matthieu (2007). Paris : Bayard.