Hello all, I’m Rebecca!
I was born in the high mountain desert of western Colorado. I spent my childhood being as close to nature as I could; my fondest memories are those where I was simply alone in the mountains playing with mud, wood, and flowers. In the past 7 years, I have had a back and forth relationship between Colorado and Western Europe. During my undergrad years, I studied in France and focused on bilingual education, existentialism, and absurdism.
After my graduation, I began teaching French and English in Colorado. But not long after, I felt pulled to go back to Europe for good. I moved to Germany three years ago to study the German language and then moved to Luxembourg to complete a Master degree in Multilingual and Multicultural Learning and Communication. For my MA thesis, I focused on an Evangelical bible study group for high school girls in a small mountain town in Colorado. During this ethnography, I discovered a great need for more attention to be paid to the role of religion and spirituality within the lives of girls.
I recently settled in Frankfurt am Main, Germany where I am teaching in a primary school. My goal is to soon return to academia where I can complete a Doctorate at the intersection of Girls’ Studies and the Anthropology of religion. When I’m not teaching or diving deep into the sea of literature on women and religion, I am out in the forest hiking, meditating, and collecting medicinal herbs. In the evenings though, you’ll find me inside painting with my water colors.
I have a great love for the French, German and English languages, so I try to keep my bookshelf and nightstand full of books and poetry. My favorite museums here in Germany are the expansive Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin and the Frauenmuseum in Wiesbaden. Particularly interesting at the Women’s Museum are the pieces focusing on female deities and the inclusion of women from non-Christian religious backgrounds.
A large issue facing girls today became very clear as I was conducting my research for my thesis. The girls I was spending my time with were constantly wrestling with issues or morality as they tried to be a ‘good’ girl and they expressed an intense suffering as a side-effect of their efforts. The anxiety they described as a result of their endless striving to make the ‘right’ choice combined with the feelings of unworthiness and depression they felt when they weren’t able to measure up to such a staunch definition of goodness was heart-breaking. Their ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ were almost never decided by their own intuition or desires, but were rather reflections of what other people wanted for them. Their morality was one based on other people’s expectations for them and this turned out to be quite problematic to their sense of well-being. This issue is of course not just relegated to just Christian girls. I believe it is crucial that all girls learn to trust their instincts, listen to their own wise inner voice, and cast aside assumptions of what it means to be a ‘good’ girl.
-Rebecca Davis
Junior Girl
Girl Museum Inc.