Launch of QTR: A Journal of Trans and Queer Studies in Religion

Sahin Acikgoz is an assistant professor of Islam, gender, and sexuality in the department for the study of religion and a member of the executive committee of the Middle East and Islamic studies program at the University of California, Riverside. They received their PhD in comparative literature and LGBTQ studies from the University of Michigan, where they cofounded the Transnational Gender and Sexuality Studies Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop. They were also the recipient of the 2019 Sarah Pettit Doctoral Fellowship in LGBT Studies at Yale University and the Holstein Dissertation Fellowship in queer and transgender studies in religion at UC Riverside.

Orit Avishai is a Professor of Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Fordham University. As an ethnographer, Avishai is interested in how ideology and culture, very broadly defined, shape social institutions, identity categories, political dialogue, cultural practices, and processes of knowledge production. Avishai’s most recent research focused on Orthodox Jewish LGBT activism and experiences in Israel, and Queer Judaism: LGBT Activism and the Remaking of Jewish Orthodoxy in Israel was published by NYU Press in March 2023.

Ahmad Greene-Hayes is an assistant professor of African-American religious studies at Harvard Divinity School and a member of the standing committee for the study of religion. A social historian and critical theorist, he is an accomplished scholar and teacher, and his research interests include critical Black studies, Black Atlantic religions in the Americas, and race, queerness, and sexuality in the context of African American and Caribbean religious histories. He is the author of Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion-Making in Jim Crow New Orleans. He has also held prestigious fellowships from Yale’s LGBT Studies program and the American Society of Church History.

Joseph Marchal (co-editor of QTR) is a professor of religious studies and women’s and gender studies at Ball State University. They are the author, editor, or co-editor of more than ten books, including Appalling Bodies: Queer Figures Before and After Paul’s Letters and Sexual Disorientations: Queer Temporalities, Affects, Theologies; and two forthcoming collections: on trans biblical interpretation, and the politics of respectability in Black, womanist, and queer approaches. They are also currently serving as chair of the Society of Biblical Literature’s first-ever committee for LGBTIQ+ scholars and scholarship.

Evren Savcı is an assistant professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale University. She is the author of Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal Islam, and co-editor of the South Atlantic Quarterly special issue “Transnational Queer Materialism.”

Max Strassfeld is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Southern California. They are the author of Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature, which won AAR’s Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion – Textual Studies.

Melissa Wilcox (co-editor of QTR) is a professor and Holstein Family and Community Chair of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where Dr. Wilcox organizes the annual UCR Conference on Queer and Trans Studies in Religion and the Holstein Dissertation Fellowship. A specialist in the study of gender, sexuality, and religion in the Global North/Global West, Dr. Wilcox has authored or edited seven books, including most recently Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody; Queer Religiosities: An Introduction to Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion; and Religion, the Body, and Sexuality. Dr. Wilcox’s current research is on religion and spirituality as sites of healing in queer, trans, and BIPOC leather and kink communities.