Keynote Speakers

Melissa Wilcox

Professor and Holstein Family and Community Chair in Religious Studies
University of California, Riverside

Melissa M. Wilcox received her doctorate in Religious Studies from U.C. Santa Barbara in 2000. Her transdisciplinary research program focuses on gender studies and queer studies in religion, with particular emphasis on the U.S. and Europe in the context of transnational queer and religious politics. Her books include Coming Out in Christianity: Religion, Identity, and Community (Indiana University Press, 2003); Sexuality and the World’s Religions (co-edited with David W. Machacek; ABC-CLIO, 2003); Queer Women and Religious Individualism (Indiana University Press, 2009); and Religion in Today’s World: Global Issues, Sociological Perspectives (Routledge, 2013). Her 2009 book received the annual book award from the Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association. Her newest book, Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody, is forthcoming in 2018 from the Sexual Cultures series at NYU Press, and she is currently working on two textbooks focused on sexuality and queer studies in religion.

 

Ashon Crawley

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and African American and African Studies
University of Virginia

Ashon Crawley works in the areas of black studies, queer theory, sound studies, theology, continental philosophy, and performance studies. His first book project, Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press) investigates alternative modes of sociality present in the aesthetics practices of Black Pentecostalism. He is currently working on three projects: one tentatively titled “The Lonely Letters,” an autobiofiction that explores the relationships between blackness, quantum mechanics, mysticism, and love; a second that considers the role of the Hammond B-3 organ in Black Christianity; and a critique of western mysticism.