Queer/Religion
Contributors include Carol S. Anderson, Sarah Bracke, Kent L. Brintnall, Elizabeth A. Castelli, Amanullah De Sondy, Marco Derks, Elizabeth Dolfi, Ju Hui Judy Han, Sarra Lev, Tami Navarro, Elizabeth Ohlson Wallin, Mariecke van den Berg, Nella van den Brandt, Adriaan van Klinken, Bee Scherer, Claudia Schippert, Laurel C. Schneider, Max Strassfeld, Emilie M. Townes, Jennifer Ung Loh, Heather White, Melissa Wilcox & Nikki Young.
This issue of The Scholar and Feminist Online, edited by Elizabeth A. Castelli, brings together scholarship rooted in Queer Studies and Religious Studies, exploring the intersections of these areas of inquiry which are too-often constructed as entirely separate. The contributions to this volume are largely drawn from a BCRW-convening entitled “At the Intersection of Queer Studies and Religion,” held in November 2013. Together, these short essays contribute to a theoretical and empirical cartography for mapping the terrain at the intersections of queer studies and religion.
Written at a particular moment—just before a series of significant political shifts toward the right around the globe, with more in the offing—this collection offers a snapshot of thinking, theorizing, and documentary preservation. None of these authors would make the naïve argument for a progress narrative when it comes to religion and queer life. Instead, their contributions offer glimpses of reading, thinking, living in modes that keep “religion” and “queer” in creative and critical suspense—or as contributor Nikki Young puts it, “Religion and queerness/queer studies challenge the notion that creating possibilities, identities, and responses to unjust social circumstances is outside the real of our individual and collective power and responsibility. Through religion and queerness, we ask questions of our selves and our theoretical and material surroundings.”
In the current political moment, the very act of posing such questions becomes an act of critical resistance, and it is to that resistance that this collection is dedicated.