Religion and Queer Theory: Crossing Boundaries, Trans-formations, and  Que(e)rying Traditions

Speaker: Whitney A. Bauman
Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
Florida International University

Wednesday, 11 December 2013, 18.30 WIB
GAYa NUSANTARA Community Center, Jl. Mojo Kidul I/11A Surabaya

At first glance, one might think that religion and “queer” identities are at odds.  Most of us are familiar with contemporary religious arguments against same-sex sex and transgendered identities.  Indeed, we are taught to think that should one choose to live a lifestyle that is other than heterosexual or celibate, then one cannot be religious.  Like oil and water, we are told, religion and sexualities other than hetero, do not mix.

This presentation argues otherwise and looks at the queer history of many of the world’s religious traditions: from trickster figures  and “third spirits” that blur the boundaries between male/female,  to understandings of monastic life that offered gay and lesbian men and women alternatives forms of living outside of the expected hetero-patriarchal norms, to looking at same-sex unions in religious traditions and the construction of hetero-normativity.  In all of these ways, religious traditions are stranger (or more queer) than meets the eye, and religious arguments used to justify the condemnation of GLBTQ peoples and even violence toward GLBTQ bodies fall on their own sword.

Free & open to public.

Bio Note: Whitney Bauman, Ph.D, is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University.  He is the author of several books, including: Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic (Columbia University Press Forthcoming 2014), Voices of Feminist Liberation, with Emily Silverman and Dirk von der Horst (Equinox 2012); and Theology, Creation, and Environmental Ethics (Routledge 2009). He is currently a Fulbright Scholar at IAIN Sunan Ampel in Surabaya.

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