About the Event
Hosted by AAR Status of Women and Gender Minoritized Persons in the Professions Committee
Gender and religious studies are under attack in U.S. universities and colleges. Join us for a webinAAR where panelists in the field discuss the current situation with all of the complex intersectionalities of gender, religion, race, ethnicity, language, and institutional policies. This session will also include a roundtable discussion where panelists and participants will brainstorm about solidarity and strategies across institutions.
Event Guidelines
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For assistance, please view our video walkthrough. You can adjust the playback speed on the video next to the closed caption icon. If you still have questions, please contact us.
Panelists
Dr. Juliane Hammer (she/her) is professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She specializes in the study of gender and sexuality in Muslim societies and communities, race and gender in US Muslim communities, as well as contemporary Muslim thought, activism and practice. She is the author of Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence (2019); American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism: More Than a Prayer (2012), and Palestinians Born in Exile: Diaspora and the Search for a Homeland (2005). She is also the co-editor of A Jihad for Justice: The Work and Life of Amina Wadud (2012); the Cambridge Companion to American Islam (2013), Muslim Women and Gender Justice: Concepts, Sources, and Histories (2020), and Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities: Towards Awareness and Accountability (2024). She is currently working on a project titled, “Halal Sex and Marriage: Muslim Feminist Sexual Ethics for the 21st Century.”
Dr. Shanna Katz Kattari is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department (by courtesy), the director of the [Sexuality | Relationships | Gender] Research Collective, and the convener of the Social Work Disability Justice League. A white, AuDHD, disabled, chronically ill, queer, fat, nonbinary femme, they are an esteemed researcher, scholar, and advocate whose work has made significant contributions to the fields of social work, health disparities, and LGBTQ+ studies. With a steadfast commitment to social justice and equity, Dr. Kattari’s research and advocacy efforts have focused on understanding and addressing the unique challenges faced by marginalized communities, particularly within the realms of gender, sexuality, and disability (including neurodiversity). Through their innovative and community centered research, Dr. Kattari has worked to make evident the complex intersections of identity and health, with a particular emphasis on the experiences of transgender and gender diverse individuals, and members of the disability community.
Dr. Thelathia “Nikki” Young is vice president for institutional equity and access, professor of religion, and professor of gender and sexuality studies at Haverford College. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University, M. Div. and Th.M. from Candler School of Theology at Emory, and B.A. in Biology from University of North Carolina-Asheville. Her research focuses on the intersection of ethics, family, race, gender, and sexuality. She is interested in the impact of queerness on moral reasoning. Young has published three books, including a solo-authored monograph, Black Queer Ethics, Family, and Philosophical Imagination (2016), a collaborative project with Drs. Eric Barreto and Jake Myers, In Tongues of Mortals and Angels: A De-Constructive Theology of God-Talk in Acts and Corinthians (2018). Young is currently working on a new manuscript, tentatively titled, We Plead the Blood of Freedom: A Transnational Ethics of Black Queer Liberative Practice.
Moderator
Dr. Eleanor Craig researches gender, race, coloniality, and religion in literary and philosophical modes. They are interested in how critiques of these entangled dynamics take shape in Atlantic and transpacific frameworks. Craig is co-editor of Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion (Duke UP, 2021) and special issues of Representations and Political Theology. Their first monograph, in progress, analyzes theories of trauma and racial melancholia with attention to their epistemological and religious dimensions. It examines constructions of the human, temporality, violence, and healing that appear in these theories and in experimental literary forms. Craig’s second book project is on Asian American poets’ portrayals of religion as both upholding and challenging racial, gendered, and colonialist structures. In the American Academy of Religion, Craig is on steering committees for the units on Religion, Colonialism, and Postcolonialism, and Theology and Religious Reflection. They also serve on the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Minoritized Persons in the Profession.
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