Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection Unit

For a potential co-sponsored panel between Lesbian-Feminisms and Religion Unit, Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection Unit, and Theology and Religious Reflection Unit: a panel engaging Wendy Mallette’s Lesbian Feminist Killjoys: Sin, Queer Negativity, and Inherited Guilt (NYU Press, 2026). This is a largely pre-arranged author-meets-respondents session, but we are interested in including additional scholars interested in historical and/or theological approaches to queer, lesbian, feminist, and trans studies, Christian discourse on sin, and American religious cultures. Please email Siobhan Kelly (smk@ku.edu) if you would like to be considered as a panelist.

For a papers session or roundtable, we invite proposals that address the following: What is the future of feminism in religious studies and theology? How does feminism inform, or how might it show up in, our future versions of religious belief and practice, the academy, and the complex bio-cultural milieus in which we live? Proposals could address topics that include but are not limited to: Pragmatism; eschatology; apocalypticism; utopias/utopianism; science fiction, survival, resilience, hope, despair, emotion, affect, care, public health; incremental and/or (inter/trans)generational change; power and structures of power; extractivism; temporality/decolonization of time; crip time and disability theory; decolonial perspectives; absences, silencing, marginalizations, and historical recovery; prison abolition and carcerality; Chicana futurisms, Afro-futurisms, Astro-futurisms; trans studies/transfuturism; thickening fat studies; critical posthumanisms; environmental studies; anthropocene discourses; generative/agentic AI; geoengineering; extinction/rebellion; or any other ideas that explore the future(s) of feminism and feminist theory. 

For a round table addressing the legacies and future visions of nuclear technologies, we invite proposals addressing the ethical implications of, and feminist responses to, nuclear technologies and their public and environmental health impacts. We will be inviting local community members and activists to participate in this roundtable with scholars. Home to the former nuclear weapons production facility, Rocky Flats, Denver, Colorado, has become an important case study for assessing ongoing environmental contamination and legacy impacts or radiation, and for critical analysis of the histories of nuclear technologies, sacrificed populations (human and non), and the deep time impacts of irradiated landscapes. We seek proposals from individuals whose work engages critical feminist perspectives and/or approaches to the ways that we understand the histories and futures of nuclear technologies and anti-nuclear activism. Topics could include, but are not limited to: nuclear guardianship; despair and empowerment; grief(work); trauma/horror; memory/remembering; healing; post-apocalyptic and religious future visions; religious based resistance; liberation theology; resilience; regeneration; healing; nuclear afterlives; deep time; nuclear (de)colonization; collaborative and synergistic alliances; public health; disproportionate impact; social and environmental justice; impacted communities/populations; environmental contamination; community engaged scholarship; revisionist history and (her)story; survivor studies; transnational approaches; and climate discourses.