Week 1
Marcella Althaus Reid and Normativity

Marcella Althaus Reid is something of a founding figure in queer theology. Her ‘indecent theology’ combines liberation theology’s concern for the lives of the poor with queer theory’s rejection of ‘normativity’ (a term that will be explained in the lecture). The result is a theology that attends to liberation as it manifests in ‘indecent’ acts of sexual resistance to Christian colonialism.

Week 2
Susannah Cornwall and Gregory of Nissa

Marcella Althaus Reid’s focus on transgression might lead you to think that queer theology has no interest in the canonical sources of the Christian tradition. However, you would be wrong! This session looks at Susannah Cornwall’s recovery of the Father of the Church, Gregory of Nissa, to reimagine our relationship to humansexuation, as well as to engage with the challenge of ‘homonormativity’ in queer communities.

Week 3
Linn Tonstad and Queer Reading

Susannah Cornwall’s recovery of Gregory of Nissa illustrates that sometimes queer theology can take a more positive look at traditional Christian sources. But are such recoveries truly queer? What does it mean for a queer reader to look back at the Christian tradition? And how might we do so in a way that lives up to the radical aspirations of queer theory itself? This week, we will see how Linn Tonstad engages these questions in her essay, ‘Everything Queer, Nothing Radical?’

Week 4
Feeling, Recovery, and Critique

The past two weeks raised questions about queer reading practices. This week, we’ll be looking at another text by Linn Tonstad, which explores another significant theme in queer theory for doing queer theology: affect, or feeling. In this paper, Tonstad resources the queer affect theorist, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, to interrogate the way that queer readers might approach traditional texts, exploring how different kinds of feelings towards the tradition can shape our reading practices.

A continuous theme running through this course has been the difficulties and ambivalences of queer theology as a negative theological project. Beginning with Marcella Althaus Reid’s theological appropriation of queer antinormativity, we have explored what it means to approach the Christian tradition as a queer reader who both troubles and is troubled by the sources that would inform us. In this final session, we will look at the theological significance of this task itself, drawing on Micah Cronin’s recent essay, ‘Queer Grace: an Essay on the Task of Queer Theology’.

Week 5
Negativity,Antinormativity and Queer Grace‍

A continuous theme running through this course has been the difficulties and ambivalences of queer theology as a negative theological project. Beginning with Marcella Althaus Reid’s theological appropriation of queer antinormativity, we have explored what it means to approach the Christian tradition as a queer reader who both troubles and is troubled by the sources that would inform us. In this final session, we will look at the theological significance of this task itself, drawing on Micah Cronin’s recent essay, ‘Queer Grace: an Essay on the Task of Queer Theology’.

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