Advisors
Caro Bratnober (they/she) is the Public Services Librarian at the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary in New York. She completed a Masters degree in Library & Information Science at the Pratt Institute, then a Master of Arts at Union Theological Seminary. Her library and archival work is informed by her research in gender and sexuality studies, (dis)ability studies, ethics and religious studies, along with digital-media and information-literacy studies. She coordinates research and access services for the Burke Library and across the Columbia University Libraries, and creates exhibits, user-engagement projects, and instruction-design initiatives. She has written for Religion Dispatches and recently collaborated on an Open Educational Resource (OER) with librarians at the State University of New York-Geneseo, an open online introductory textbook to LGBTQ Studies.
Khytie Brown, P,h.D. (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an ethnographer and scholar of African diaspora religions and African and African American studies. She holds a Ph.D. in African and African American studies from Harvard University with disciplinary foci in religion and anthropology. Her research focuses on the interrelationships between religion, race, gender and sexual alterity, material culture and sensory epistemologies among African diasporic religious practitioners in the Caribbean and Latin America.
Ashley Coleman Taylor, Ph.D. (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. As a Black feminist Africana religionist and transdisciplinary ethnographer, she specializes in the intersecting experiences of embodiment, Black genders and sexualities, and religious experience in Puerto Rico and her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Her current book-in-progress, tentatively titled Majestad (pronounced Mah-Hey-Stod) Negra: Race, Class, Gender and Religious Experience in the Puerto Rican Imaginary, is an intersectional Black feminist approach to race, class, gender, and coloniality in Puerto Rico. Her work has been published in CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, PMLA, Africana Studies Review, and the Journal for the American Academy of Religion. Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, American Council for Learned Societies, and the Arcus Foundation, as well as community organizations Counter Narrative Project and Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative.
Gillian Frank, Ph.D. (he/him) is a historian of sexuality and religion. He is the author of numerous academic articles on the histories of sexuality, gender and religion (which have appeared in venues like the Journal of the History of Sexuality, American Jewish History, and Gender and History) and public facing scholarship (which has been published by the Washington Post, Time, Jezebel and Slate). He is also co-editor of Devotions of Desire: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the 20th Century United States (UNC Press: 2018). Frank is currently at work on a manuscript called A Sacred Choice: Liberal Religion and the Struggle for Abortion Before Roe v Wade (forthcoming UNC Press). You can listen to his podcast "Sexing History," which explores how the history of sexuality shapes our present, wherever you stream your shows.
Timothy W. Jones, Ph.D. (he/they) is a historian of gender, sexuality and religion in modern Australia and the United Kingdom. Tim is an Associate Professor in History at La Trobe University in Melbourne and is President of the Australian Queer Archives. He was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne in 2007 and was Lecturer in History at the University of South Wales from 2008-2012. Tim’s first book is Sexual Politics in the Church of England, 1857-1957 (Oxford, 2013). He is also co-editor of Love and Romance in Britain, 1918-1970 (Palgrave, 2015), Material Religion in Modern Britain: The Spirit of Things (Palgrave, 2015), and Interdisciplinary Feminist Perspectives on Crimes of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse (Routledge, 2018), and was lead author of the report Preventing Harm, Promoting Justice: Responding to LGBT Conversion Therapy in Australia (2018). Tim is currently continuing research into LGBT conversion practices in Australia, working on a biography of Anglican historian and theologian of sexuality, D.S. Bailey, and writing up a monograph of the rise of the New Christian Right in Australia since the sexual revolution.
Nancy Krody (she/her) has been an activist with the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns for over 50 years and was the first co-coordinator with Bill Johnson. Through this time she has also been a leader in the UCC at the national, Conference, and Association levels (past Moderator and currently registrar and secretary-treasurer of the Philadelphia Association). She is also a long-time elder and clerk of her local church, which is both UCC and Presbyterian. She has been involved in the ecumenical LGBTQ movement with WOW Conferences, the Rolling the Stone Away gathering, and LGBTQ-RAN. She has also been active in LGBTQ groups in the Philadelphia area and with OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). Professionally, Nancy retired as the managing editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies at Temple University, after 45 years, and where she continues pro bono as its copyeditor. She brings editorial skills, some sense of history going way back, and a commitment to working with all genders despite being a "fesbian leminist" at heart.
Rev. Derrick McQueen, Ph.D. (he/him) is the pastor of St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem, the oldest African American Presbyterian Church in New York City. He serves as the first, ordained, out African American pastor of a historic Black Church in the Presbyterian denomination. Derrick serves as the Chair of the board of directors of Auburn Theological Seminary, which equips bold and resilient leaders with the tools and resources needed for social justice movement in a multifaith world. He is also board chair of InterConnected Justice, which champions Pan-African solidarity in the African Diaspora. He has served as the chair of the LGBT Faith Leaders of African Descent in New York City. Rev. Dr. McQueen is the Associate Director for Community Partnerships at Columbia University Center on African American Religion Sexual Politics and Social Justice—better known as CARSS. The project brings together scholars, activists, clergy, and communities for healing in historic Black Church life culture. Rev. McQueen earned his Ph. D. in Homiletics and New Testament at Union Theological Seminary (New York). He also received an M. Div. in Worship and the Arts from Union; and a B.A. in Theater Arts from Drew University. Photo: Bob Gore Productions
Elizabeth Pérez, Ph.D. (she/her) is associate professor of Religious
Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is an
ethnographer and historian of Afro-Diasporic traditions and LGBTQ
religious experience. Her first book, Religion in the Kitchen:
Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions (New
York University Press, 2016), was awarded the 2017 Clifford Geertz
Prize in the Anthropology of Religion by the Society for the
Anthropology of Religion, and it received Honorable Mention for the
Caribbean Studies Association’s 2019 Barbara T. Christian Literary
Award. In 2022, she received the LGBTQ-RAN Educational Resource Prize.
Her second book is The Gut: A Black Atlantic Alimentary Tract (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Justin Sabia-Tanis, Ph.D. (he/him) earned his PhD from the Graduate Theological Union in Interdisciplinary Studies, focusing on sexuality, art, and religion. He earned a Master’s degree at Harvard University and a previous doctorate from San Francisco Theological Seminary. He currently is an assistant professor and director of the Social Transformation program at United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities. Justin’s previous work includes advocacy for LGBT rights in national non-profit organizations. He was the Community Education and Outreach Manager at the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) in Washington, D.C. and later served as the Director of Communications for Out & Equal Workplace Advocates. He is the author of Transgender: Ministry, Theology, and Communities of Faith, which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in 2003, and is a contributor to the forthcoming Transgender: Four Views (Baker Academic Press, 2018). He has also contributed chapters to the Queer Bible Commentary and Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible. An artist and photographer, Justin has had a lifelong passion for the arts.
Phillis Isabella Sheppard, Ph.D. (she/her) is the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion and Graduate Department of Religion, the first African American woman to be promoted to full professor at the Divinity School and the inaugural Executive Director of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements at Vanderbilt University. She is an ordained priest (ARCWP), a commissioned Community Chaplain in the Upper Room, an Inclusive Catholic Community, and holds a deep appreciation for the multiple spaces where one may experience the sacred. Dr. Sheppard’s research interests are concerned with the relationship between interiority and social processes, and interdisciplinary approaches to lived religion. A womanist practical theologian and psychoanalyst, she privileges narrative and interdisciplinary reflection, and relies on ethnography as a critical method. Sheppard is the author of two books. Her first, Self, Culture and Others in Womanist Practical Theology considers Black women’s lived experience through a womanist informed psychoanalytic perspective and cultural analysis. Her second book, Tilling Sacred Ground: Interiority, Black Women, and Religious Experience examines religious experience and its intertwinement with interiority in social spaces and processes. Her work consistently elucidates the complex negotiation of race, gender, and sexuality in private and public spaces. Her third book, in process, Poking and Prodding with a Purpose: Womanist Ethnography in Method and Practice, centers Black women’s narratives in the elaboration of womanist ethnographic approaches.
William Stell, Ph.D. (he/him) is a scholar of religion, sexuality, race, and disability in the United States. He is a Faculty Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at New York University, where he teaches courses on American religions. His current book project is titled Born Again Queer: The History of Evangelical Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity. His scholarship has been published in American Religion, Church History, Journal of the History of Sexuality, and Theology & Sexuality. His article "From Neighbors to Outcasts: Evangelical Gay Activism in the Late 1970s," published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, received Honorable Mention for LGBTQ-RAN's 2020–2021 Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Award.
Heather White, Ph.D. (she/her) is a specialist in American religious history with a research focus on sexuality, gender, and twentieth century social movements. As Visiting Assistant Professor, Gender & Queer Studies at the University of Puget Sound, Heather teaches courses in gender, feminist and queer studies; queer theory and queer politics; sexuality and the history of religion; and the history and politics of religious freedom. Her first book, Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2015. It was featured in Huffington Post, Religion and Politics, theL.A. Review of Books, and Religion Dispatches, and listed in the top ten “best LGBT nonfiction of 2015” by the Bay Area Reporter. Heather also co-edited an anthology (with Gillian Frank and Bethany Moreton), titled Devotions and Desires: Histories of Religion and Sexuality in the Twentieth Century United States. Heather serves on the steering committee member of the Queer Studies in Religion group of the American Academy of Religion.