About the author

Melissa M. Wilcox (any pronouns) is Professor and Holstein Family and Community Chair of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Dr. Wilcox is the author or editor of several books and journal issues, and numerous articles, on gender, sexuality, and religion. Dr. Wilcox’s books include Coming Out in Christianity: Religion, Identity, and Community; Sexuality and the World’s Religions; Queer Women and Religious Individualism; Religion in Today’s World: Global Issues, Sociological Perspectives; Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody; Queer Religiosities: An Introduction; and (with Nina Hoel and Liz Wilson) Religion, the Body, and Sexuality. Dr. Wilcox is currently working on a new research project on religion and spirituality in queer and trans leather and BDSM communities. More information is available here: http://religiousstudies.ucr.edu/full-time-faculty/melissa-m-wilcox/

It’s part of both academic ethics and feminist praxis to acknowledge your sources. But footnotes and blogs don’t really go together, so this sidebar is a general expression of gratitude and indebtedness to the many thinkers, writers, artists, and activists who’ve influenced me over the years.

The most important, for many years, have been womanists, feminists of color, and queer people of color. Liberationist thought more broadly has also been important to my work, as have those threads of Marxism that consider religion in more complex ways than Marx himself was willing to do. I’m learning more from trans theory and trans scholars each year. I’m powerfully drawn to disability theory, particularly from folks who bring it together with feminist and queer theory. And I’ve learned from and worked alongside feminist, queer, and trans thinkers of all races, ethnicities, genders, generations and ages, abilities, and nationalities, both within and – equally importantly – beyond the academy.

My work is often a reconsideration of or a different angle on existing approaches to the problems I’m considering, so it couldn’t exist without the wisdom and provocations of those who have taught me – both those who’ve cleared a path in the academy for my own work and well-being, and those for whom I’m attempting to clear a path in turn. If we don’t let our students as well as our teachers teach us, we are doomed to stagnation.

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