The disciplines of knowledge production—through which we instill in our students the practices of objectivity, generalizability, and professionalism—are no less…
gender
Refashioning gender and modern visual theology
The visual and material repertoire of Heavenly Bodies has also been fundamentally shaped by the role of allegory in Catholic…
Time, gender-bending, and the medieval church
There is undoubtedly an element of drag in contemporary women wearing quasi-clerical garb—drag charged with coquettish sacrilege. These women are…
On category-mistakes and androgynous divinities
A reprieve from those Western epistemological formulations of spirituality, this essay unpacks how the Ewe, an ethnic constituency in Ghana,…
The soulful, comic defiance of Heavenly Bodies
Heavenly Bodies surprised me because I was anticipating a celebration of Catholic aesthetics and fashion. It was partly this. But…
In defense of “crazy fatherhood,” or Parenting ain’t easy
Conscious, intentional fatherhood has limited celebration in these parts, especially that which refuses to center the father in ways the…
The “woman question” as symptomatic of imperialism
I want to bring the arguments of Farris and Scott into conversation with two other recent publications in order to…
On Sex and Secularism
Overall, the book aims to do two things: First, to offer a history that documents the ways in which gender…
Camp conviction and the politics of religion: Or, that naked public square’s really a drag
Discussions of religion in public life usually presume two things about religious conviction: it focuses on a set of beliefs…
“Keep your money, I got my own”
There is something profoundly counterintuitive about a vision of the world reveling in cash and also raising political consciousness. But…