Conference Announcement: Religion and Sexual Revolutions at the Danforth Center

Monica L. Mercado

Now that I've turned in my dissertation, I'm looking forward to leaving my office and getting back out into the world! I'm particularly excited about the lineup for the Danforth Center's next graduate student conference, "Religion and Sexual Revolutions." If you're in or around St. Louis next Friday, May 9, this looks worth a visit. University of Delaware historian Rebecca L. Davis will be giving the keynote, "Religion, Marriage, and Sexual Counterrevolutions," and our own Paul Putz will be presenting "'Endless Miseries, Ruined Lives, and Social Disasters': Marrying Parsons and Sexual Revolution in the Progressive Era."

The full conference schedule is posted after the jump.

Religion and Sexual Revolutions

Friday, May 9, 2014

Free and Open to the Public

RSVP rap@wustl.edu

9:00 – 9:15 a.m. – Opening Remarks, Emily Johnson

9:15 – 10:45 a.m. - Panel I: Religion and Sexual Revolutions in the 19th Century (Respondent: Leigh Eric Schmidt)

Shari Rabin (Yale University, RLST), “‘I Prefer Choice Myself: Everyday Life and Jewish Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century”

Suzanna Krivulskaya (Washington University in St. Louis, HIST), “‘Love Cannot Find Them’: Disappearing Ministers and Sensational Scandals in Late Nineteenth-Century America”

Paul Putz (Baylor University, HIST), “'Endless Miseries, Ruined Lives, and Social Disasters': Marrying Parsons and Sexual Revolution in the Progressive Era”

10:45 – 11:00 a.m. - Break

11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. – Panel II: National and Transnational Regulation and Panic (Respondent: Rebecca L. Davis)

Adina Johnson (Baylor University, HIST), “‘Exploitation of Our Young American Womanhood on the Grounds of Patriotism’: Protestant Responses to Cultural Changes on the Home Front During World War II”

Eva Payne (Harvard University, AMST), “A Worldwide Threat: ‘Problems of Sex’ at the 1926 World’s YMCA Conference”

Karen E. Smyth (Saint Louis University, AMST), “Hope for the Future of Nations: GLBTQ and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1995 – 2014”

12:30 – 1:30 p.m. – Break

1:30 – 3:00 p.m. Panel III – Religion, Sexuality and Sacred Space, 1960s–1980s (Respondent: Laurie Maffly-Kipp)

Mary McGuire (University of California, Santa Barbara, History of Art and Architecture), “Soul Competency and Sexual Liberation at the Judson Memorial Church”

Gregg Drinkwater (University of Colorado Boulder, HIST), “Building Queer Judaism: Liturgy, Ritual, and Sexuality at San Francisco’s Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, 1977–1992”

Nicholas Mendoza (Harvard), “Liberating the World through Gay Sex Magic: Reconstructing the Logic of Purusha Larkin’s The Divine Androgyne”

3:00 – 3:15 p.m. – Break

3:15 – 4:45 p.m. – Panel IV: Regulating Sexuality and Gender in Modern Media (Respondent: R. Marie Griffith)

Brett Krutzsch (Temple University, RLST), “Making a Gay Death Matter: The ‘Martyrdom’ of Matthew Shepard”

Elizabeth F. Dolfi (Columbia University, RLST), “Christian Domestic Discipline: Contemporary Evangelical Sexual Cultures and Complementarianism’s Queer Echo”

Brad L. Stoddard (Florida State University, RLST), “The Quest for Authentic Manhood: Rethinking Gender, Religion, and Public Policy”

4:45 – 5:30 p.m. – Break

5:30 – 7:00 p.m. – Keynote Lecture in Umrath Lounge

Rebecca L. Davis (University of Delaware), “Religion, Marriage, and Sexual Counterrevolutions”

* * *

It's also worth noting that we're less than a month out from the sixteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women (May 22-25, 2014 in Toronto, ON), aka the Big Berks. Berks organizers have posted a list of religious studies papers and panels on their website, and you can bet I'll be sitting in on Carol Faulkner's presentation "'Spiritualistic Free Love': Religious and Sexual Respectability in the Women's Rights Movement" as part of the panel "Religious Outsiders in the 19th-Century Women's Rights Movement." 

It might be the end of the semester, but there's a lot going on! If any readers are headed to St. Louis and/or Toronto, leave a comment -- I'd love to see you there.