Lesbian-Feminisms and Religion Unit
The Lesbian-Feminisms and Religion Unit invites papers, panels, or roundtable sessions focused on trans, queer, lesbian, and/or feminist scholarship. We seek proposals on the following themes:
- We are interested in work that addresses AAR’s Presidential Theme, “Freedom,” through the lenses of BDSM, kink, leather, and other minoritized sexual practices. What freedoms arise out of constraint? What pleasures are possible (if any) in situations of unfreedom? We seek contributions that look at the relationship between religion and sexual practices, thinking with scholars as wide-ranging as (but not limited to) Marcella Althaus-Reid, Leo Bersani, Kent Brintnall, Patrick Califia, Andrea Long Chu, Tim Dean, Amber Hollibaugh, Niklaus Largier, Kobena Mercer, Amber Jamilla Musser, Jennifer Nash, Maggie Nelson, Paul Preciado, Gayle Rubin, Hortense Spillers, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, Margot Weiss, Linda Williams, and beyond.
- We are also interested in proposals that address themes of carcerality, fugitivity, enclosure, debt, or other practices of (un)freedom through trans, queer, feminist, and/or lesbian methods and theoretical approaches.
- For a potential co-sponsored panel with the Gay Men and Religion Unit and the Secularism and Secularity Unit, for a panel celebrating and thinking with Anthony Petro’s Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars (Oxford University Press, 2025). This is a largely pre-arranged author-meets-respondents session, but we are interested in including additional scholars interested in queer, gay, lesbian, feminist, and trans visual culture, and twentieth-century American religious histories who would like to participate. Please email Siobhan Kelly (siokelly@bu.edu) if you would like to be considered as a panelist.
For over 30 years this unit has been committed to lesbian-feminism in the study of religion. Whether pursued through religious studies, social-scientific, historical, or theological methods during the approach to the academic study of religion, lesbian-feminist scholarship challenges hegemonic discourse within gay, lesbian, and queer movements that function to privilege queer theory as capable of eclipsing theories and methodologies that are explicitly feminist in the face of entrenched patriarchy and self-consciously lesbian in the face of persistent heteronormativity. We are especially committed to scholars and scholarship that advance people of color, trans scholars, persons with disabilities, decoloniality, and economic justice. This is accomplished with diverse and timely themes, and by providing a theoretical space for probing and further developing the openings and opportunities afforded by changing sociopolitical and theoretical contexts.