Intersections of Queer Studies and Religion

The relationships among religion, gender and sexuality have been contentious in a number of areas of the world – although the debates and controversies that mark these contentions have varied greatly in different countries and across different religious traditions. “Intersections of Queer Studies and Religion” is BCRW’s contribution to a larger transnational project on “Interdisciplinary Innovations in the Study of Religion and Gender: Postcolonial, Post-secular, and Queer Perspectives.” This project was initiated in 2011 by Professor Anne-Marie Korte at Utrecht Univesrity and supported by a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NOW) with the intention of creating an interdisciplinary and international network of researchers and research groups to explore these issues.

The resulting project has involved researchers from Belgium, Britain, Finland, Germany, and the U.S. BCRW’s contribution to this project was to host one of the “expert meetings” of the project, “At the Intersection of Queer Studies and Religion.” The conference addressed such questions as: How has queer studies in religion shaped the field more generally? What epistemological contributions does a queer approach facilitate? What are the social and political implications of working at the intersections of these two fields? BCRW is in the process of producing an issue of Scholar & Feminist Online, edited by Elizabeth Castelli and based on this 2014 conference.

In spring of 2015, the group realized its goal with the launch of a new international professional organization, the International Association for the study of Religion and Gender: http://projectreligionandgender.org/.