Lesbian-Feminisms and Religion Unit
The Lesbian-Feminisms and Religion Unit invites papers that explore the relationship between lesbian-feminisms and trans theory within the study of religion. Lesbian-feminism and transness overlap in myriad ways. Lesbian-feminism is a theme of trans studies: Susan Stryker’s essay, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein” (1994), invokes lesbian motherhood as an experience shared across trans and non-trans partners, while Andrea Long Chu’s “On Liking Women” (2018) explores the feeling that she has “never been able to differentiate liking women from wanting to be like them.” Trans studies, in one of its many possible stories, can be thought to emerge as a response to (by no means universal) lesbian-feminist transphobia.
These terms cohere to one another while troubling the other’s categories and aims in ways harmful and generative across intersecting activism and affections. "In The Terrible We (2022), Cameron Awkward-Rich thinks with the bad feelings and mad habits of thought that persist in both transphobic discourse and trans cultural production... He demonstrates that rather than only impeding or confining trans life, thought, and creativity, forms of maladjustment have also been and will continue to be central to their development." We are broadly interested in the confluence of fears and desires, despair and joy, amidst lesbian-feminisms and trans studies within religion. Is there a lesbian-transfeminsim to be found in the study of religion? Are these discourses ir/reconcilable? We seek historical and speculative proposals on affect, archives, theory, and methods that illuminate the influence of religion in re/shaping such intimacies. Underrepresented scholars, practitioners, and activists are especially encouraged to submit proposals.
Co-sponsored session with Mysticism Unit
The Lesbian-Feminisms and Religion Unit and the Mysticism Unit invite papers that explore trans spirituality and mystical practice. We are especially interested in papers that interrogate trans spiritual practices that lay claim to deracinated beliefs and rituals and papers that analyze claims of trans exceptionalism and the inherent sanctity of trans subjects. What logics of exclusion are reproduced through these spiritual practices? And what promises and limitations arise from an emphasis on healing in trans mysticism?
co-sponsored session with Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection
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 maleness and heteronormativity. We are especially committed to scholars and scholarship that advance people of color, 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.