Queering Paradigms

Book 11 in the Queering Paradigms Series was published earlier this year and is available from Peter Lang and contains papers from both the QP@CIRQUE conference in Pisa and the QP2021 online conference and some additional papers.

This is anthology brings together scholarly studies, creative writing, and images to critically discuss, question, and celebrate spirituality and religion from a queer perspective. The chapters closely analyse religious practices, scriptures, and institutions from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. They discuss religious teaching and care as spaces for queer community, showcasing the many ways in which queer identities, critiques, and lifestyles intersect with religion across geographies and histories. They also focus on the nexus between state, market, and religious institutions. The book looks at how queer people experience religion and spirituality around the world. It challenges the idea that religion and spirituality are separate from each other and shows how they affect people’s lives. It also looks at how social science and humanities-oriented queer studies can be changed to include religion and spirituality.

Part I Queer-Flexibility of Religions

1. Not Your Tragic Queer Muslim Story (Lamya H)
2. Buddhist Perspective of “Homosexual Love” (Chao-Hwei Shih (Trans. by Chen Xiong-cai))
3. Identity, Gender, and Performance: An Ethnographic View of a Queer Purim Celebration in a Reform Jewish Congregation (Elazar Ben-Lulu (Trans. by Merav Datan))
4. Queering and Queerness in the Prologue of Mark’s Gospel: Time, Space and Matter (Peter-Ben Smit)
5. Trumu Fetish – The Shrine (Amaqhawekazi Emafini Malamlela)

Part II Bearing Witness to the Production of Religious Heteronormativities

6. Sexless Bachelors, Monogamous Couples, and Promiscuous Kings in Ancient India (Vinod Kumar)
7. Buddhist Perspectives on LGBTIQ+ Mental Distress and Suicidality (Bee Scherer)
8. Multiply Queered, Singularly Queered, Victimhood, and Spiritual Growth (Hsiao-Lan Hu)
9. Facing the Holy See: Documenting LGBTI Criminalisation in the Caribbean and How British Judges Require Compliance with Degrading and Inhumane Colonial Laws (Leonardo J Raznovich)
10. Subjects of Rights and Subjects of Cruelty (Evren Savcı)
11. A Remote Corner of Russia? Anglophone Media, Anti-Queer Violence “Elsewhere”, and Its Western Signifiers (Katharina Wiedlack and Iain Zabolotny)

Part III Institutional Life of Religious and Spiritual Care

12. Elusive Tensions in Everyday Relationship-Based Social Work Practice: Exploring the Challenges for Social Work Education at the Interface between Religion and Sexuality (Janet Melville-Wiseman)
13. “Queer anthropology of ambiguity” with Respect to Paul Tillich as a Fundamental Precondition of Performativity in a Systemic Pastoral-Care-Conversation (Katrin Burja)

Part IV Queers and Ethics in Social Structures

14. The Day Jaimie Came to Class: A Critical Reflection on Creating Queer Learning Spaces (Jen Kaighin)
15. Disability: Contemporary Realities to Imagined Futures (Dan Thorpe)
16. A Case Study of Transgender Individuals Entering/Joining the Job Market in the City of Rio de Janeiro (Ricardo Henry Dias Rohm, Claudia Cristina Nunes Emidio Gonçalves, Carine Morrot de Oliveira Villasanti and Natália Fonseca Lopes)

Biographical notes

Katharina Wiedlack (Volume editor) Tegiye Birey (Volume editor) Patrick de Vries (Volume editor)

KATHARINA WIEDLACK is Assistant Professor for Anglophone Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research interests are transnational American studies, queer and feminist theory, and popular culture among others. Her monograph «Queer-feminist Punk: an Anti-Social History» was published in 2015 by the queer-feminist publisher Zaglossus. She combines her academic research, and teaching with her queer feminist activism, art and community organizing. American encounters, and the mobilization of values and identities. TEGIYE BIREY is a PhD Candidate in Gender Studies at Central European University and Utrecht University. Her PhD dissertation is an ethnography of the asylum movement in Malmö between 2017 and 2018 from the perspective of coalitional feminisms. She is the author of the article «Devising Conviviality: Intersubjective Becoming through the Labor of Community-Building» and co-editor of the volume «Challenging the Political Across Borders: Migrants’ and Solidarity Struggles» and often facilitates discussions on migration activism and gender studies. She is currently part of the organizing team of «Closet Demonstrations: An Exhibition on Queer In_visibilities» (Vienna, November 2023). PATRICK DE VRIES is a queer activist, photographer and artist. A vital Queering Paradigms associate of the first hour, de Vries was the assistant editor of «QP 7 Contested Bodies and Spaces» (2018). He holds an MSc in Environmental Chemistry from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and a PhD in Computational Biology from the University of Kent, United Kingdom.