Queer/Religion
Lilith, by Elizabeth Ohlson Wallin Elizabeth Ohlson Wallin is a Swedish photographer most noted for her exhibition Ecce Homo, in which Jesus is portrayed among gay and trans folks, as well as those who are HIV positive. She is committed to a sense of justice in her work. The cover image of Queer/Religion, reproduced with … Read more
This issue of The Scholar and Feminist Online, edited by Elizabeth A. Castelli, brings together scholarship rooted in Queer Studies and Religious Studies—but most importantly, this volume is a space in which scholars explore the intersections of these areas of inquiry which are too-often constructed as entirely separate. The contributions to this volume are largely … Read more
The origins of this issue of The Scholar and Feminist Online reside in an international research project, “Interdisciplinary Innovations in the Study of Religion and Gender: Postcolonial, Post-secular, and Queer Perspectives,” an initiative established in 2009 by the chair of Religion, Gender and Modernity in the Faculty of Humanities of Utrecht University. This project, with … Read more
From my vantage point (Black, lesbian, womanist, academic, middle-aged, administrator, orphan, older sister, partner/spouse, Baptist, US citizen…), queer theory gives me possibilities rather than a checklist of dos and don’ts in my work as a social ethicist. While I am sympathetic to methodological precision in most cases, in this particular case, I find that trying … Read more
In the research project Contested Privates, based in the Netherlands, the researchers aim to use gender and queer studies in order to unmask the stereotypes and uncover subtexts with alternative constructions of both homosexuality and religion, contributing to ways of overcoming polarized states of affairs. We expect that the extent to which queer studies is … Read more
Introduction In this short paper, I would like to draw attention to the subject of religion, secularity and non-heterosexuality in Western Europe. I intend to explore in a preliminary way some instances of journalistic coverage of what I call recent challenges to the “authority of religion” and the “authority of sexuality” in Flanders—the Dutch-speaking northern … Read more
Article acknowledgements. Introduction During a moment of light-hearted conversation in the aftermath of a recorded interview, Barbara jokingly complained that my question about being a woman within the Catholic movement she belonged to was way too difficult for her. We were lingering in a sunlit corridor of the headquarters of Comunione e Liberazione in Milan, … Read more
My comments briefly reflect on two projects, a forthcoming book and a new research project. Both endeavor to re-map a past that we think we already know. The past into which I inquire is recent and well-documented: twentieth century America, which suffers neither a dearth of sources nor a lack of insistent interpreters. Like my … Read more
Those of us working in Religious Studies and Queer Studies are very aware of the productive ways that the critical insights of these fields can speak to each other. Both of these fields deal with affects, practices, communities, and ways of conceptualizing the subject that cause the liberal paradigm to crack. At the same time, … Read more
What would a political movement that had movement per se as its focus look like? Would it be recognizable as political, as ethical? In the “Theoretical Introduction” to The Accursed Share, a work that seeks to shift our perspective from restrictive to general economy, thereby accomplishing a Copernican revolution in ethics, French social theorist Georges … Read more
