A performance of being and the enacting texts of Edith Stein / by Meghan T. Sweeney.

The texts and life of Edith Stein, who admittedly is a controversial figure (Stein was a Jewish student of the foundational 20th century German philosopher Edmund Husserl who became a Carmelite nun, and who subsequently was canonized a saint under the category of martyr by the Roman Catholic church because she was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz), provide an opportunity to explore the construction of a religious self, perhaps, in part, because of this controversy, as well as in part because of Stein's proto-postmodern "otherness" and hybridity. By considering her various narratives, and their creating influence on her emerging religious identity and self-understanding, my dissertation concretely examines various moments in Stein's religious formation by taking apart and reassembling aspects of her biography through the lenses of her philosophy and theology. In addition to exploring such themes as theological anthropology, feminist narrative theories, and mimetic performance, this project also considers both some of the more peculiar ways in which Stein has been read and the hermeneutic demands that Stein's life and texts actually place on her readers. In addition to being a sustained effort that explores the connections between Stein's early philosophy and later theology and their prescriptive narrative impact on her lived life, the dissertation also models how biography can function as a source for religious studies and theology, or as theology simply.