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The core goals of this Unit are as follows:
• Foster the application of queer theory and gender theory to the study of religion
• Encourage comparative study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues in religion
• Support the growth of bisexual studies and transgender studies in the field
We actively seek to explore the connections between queer theory in religion and complementary or overlapping fields of inquiry, such as postcolonial theory, critical race theory, disability theory, feminist theory, and cultural studies, among others.
The Queer Studies in Religion Unit welcomes proposals for individual papers, papers sessions, and roundtables on all topics related to queer theory and LGBT studies in religion, especially those focused on bisexual and/or transgender studies, those that foreground race as an analytical framework, and those that consider contexts beyond the United States and that engage religions other than Christianity.
For the 2019 Annual Meeting, we are particularly interested in:
● Individual and/or panel submissions for an author-meets-critics session on Melissa Wilcox's Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism and Serious Parody (New York University Press, 2018)
● Papers and/or sessions that engage the theme of unstable borders. This might include issues of national borders and borderlands as well as questions of gentrification, displacement, indigeneity, settler colonialism, and "safe spaces"
We also invite proposal submission for the following potential co-sponsored sessions:
● Religion and Science Fiction Unit and the Queer Studies in Religion -
This session requests proposals for papers and/or sessions that address queer and trans* approaches to religion and science fiction. Themes might also include: Afrofuturism, race, capitalism, colonialism, affect, and political geographies.
● Queer Studies in Religion and Sikh Studies -
This session solicits individual paper proposals that connect queer studies/theory and Sikh Studies, or session proposals that thematically or theoretically connect these fields. Possible topics include but are not limited to: translation (including queer readings of texts (broadly defined)); crossing borders / spaces / communities; navigating media discourses and practices; queer and/or Sikh publics; minoritarianism and/or precarity, and queerness; subjectivity, identity, and/or representation.
● For a possible co-sponsored session including multiple Units and in solidarity with the Academic Labor and Contingent Faculty Working Group, we solicit papers on religion and reproductive labor, care work, and/or affective/emotional labor (in the broadest senses of each of these). One way to conceptualize these generically is as physical and/or interactive labor, whether paid or unpaid, that keeps bodies and communities alive from one day, and one generation, to the next. Proposals could address, for example, a particular religious practice interpreted as a form of this kind of labor (or vice-versa), religious meanings of this kind of labor, the role of family, kinship, and community in structuring working relationships, or other relevant topics. We are particularly interested in how white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, disability oppression, and other apparatuses of inequality impose disparate burdens on intersectionally targeted bodies — e.g., women of color, lesbian-feminists, immigrants, continent faculty members, people with disabilities — who are involved with this kind of labor. The session will be co-sponsored by these Units: Academic Labor and Contingent Faculty Working Group; Women and Religion; Queer Studies in Religion; Religion, Affect, and Emotion; Religion and Sexuality; Religion and Disability Studies; Lesbian Feminisms and Religion; Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection; and Class, Religion, and Theology.