Unsettling Science and Religion: Contributions and Questions from Queer Studies(Religion and Science as a Critical Discourse)

This book borrows from the intellectual labor of queer theory in order to unsettle—or “queer”—the discourses of “religion” and “science,” and, by extension, the “science and religion discourse.” Drawing intellectual and social cues from works by influential theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Eve Sedgwick, chapters in this volume converge on at least three common features of queer theory. First, queer theory challenges givens that on occasion still undergird religiously and scientifically informed ways of thinking. Second, it takes embodiment seriously. Third, this engagement inevitably generates new pathways for thinking about how religious and scientific “truths” matter. These three features ultimately lend support to critical investigations into the meanings of “science” and “religion,” and the relationships between the two.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Lisa Stenmark and Whitney Bauman 1. Both/And: Science, Religion, and the Fluidity of Identity Philip Clayton and Kirianna Florez 2. If You Quare It You Can Change It: Changing the Boxes That Bind Us Emilie M. Townes 3. Thinking through Three Revolutions: Religion, Science and Colonialism Lisa Stenmark 4. Queering Authority in Science and Religion Whitney Bauman 5. Polyamorous Bastards: James Baldwin and Desires of a Queer African-American Religious Naturalism Carol Wayne White 6. Slenderman: A Trans Hermeneutic of the Apocalypse Teresa Hornsby 7. ‘Nothing in This World is Indifferent to Us’: A Dialogical Reflection on the Queerness of Theology and Science Catherine Keller and Laurel Schneider 8. Queering the Dissident Body: Race, Sex, and Disability in Rabbinic Blessings on Bodily Difference Julia Watts Belser 9. ‘Adam is Not Man: The Queer Body before Genesis 2:22 (and after) Zairong Xiang 10. Gender and Indeterminacy in Jewish Mystical Imagery Fern Feldman 11. Toward a Bright and Messy Future: The Global Ecological Crisis, the Problem of Heteronormative Bias, and the Necessity of a Queer Ecological Imagination Alex Carr Johnson 12. Queering the Library of Congress Carlos Fernandez Petrichor: An Afterword Timothy Morton Annotated Bibliography About the Contributors

About the Author :
Lisa Stenmark teaches humanities and comparative religious studies at San Jose State University. Whitney Bauman is associate professor of religious studies at Florida International University.

Review :
Unsettling Science and Religion is a volume eager to be useful to teachers and researchers. The introductory materials contain an overview of the scholars most frequently drawn on by the contributors, a brief intellectual history of the volume’s major areas, and promptings for what direction the conversation is, and should continue, developing in. The contribution of each author is summarized by the editors at the beginning, and in the afterword by Morton, and here again in this review, giving each author and reader ample opportunity to see how the work has been glossed. Each short chapter has a substantial bibliography, and the collection closes with an annotated bibliography that will be useful to readers trying to choose from among the wealth of resources suggested throughout. The science-religion-queer theory relationship is like a challenging game of three-dimensional tic-tac-toe. These erudite writers demonstrate the complexities as assumptions that grounded each leg of the tripod are not so systematically dismantled. They bravely acknowledge that all intellectual bets are off, but just as courageously insist that all justice claims are on. This book opens a conversation that will span generations and reshape reality. This exciting volume of essays represents one of the first collective attempts to ‘queer’ the relationship between religion and science. Ranging across a number of scholarly topics, the authors show not simply how queer theories and religious studies can engage science, but more importantly how science and religion need to be rethought in relation to queer theories—especially since nature, bodies, evolution, religious traditions, and even the physical universe and the divine are already in certain respects queer. They also address a series of complex, and often controversial, social and political issues, including racism, colonialism, and ecological devastation. The book should be widely read by scholars from many fields, but especially those interested in science and religion discourses and queer theories. As the first volume in the news series “Religion and Science as a Critical Discourse,” Unsettling Science and Religion: Contributions and Questions from Queer Studies, convincingly demonstrates the value of pursuing potentially unsettling questions across a number of disciplinary fields in order to tackle complex questions raised in religion and science.  Stenmark and Bauman’s introduction alone, together with the helpful annotated bibliography at the end of the volume, will be useful to a great variety of readers interested in an introduction to current challenging issues at various queer-religion-science intersections.  The essays collected offer a range of intriguing explorations of the academic disciplines, explore possible and necessary connections and challenges, often in (intentionally) unsettling ways. Topics can range from Adam to the Apocalypse; they might explore rabbinic discourse on dissident bodies or engage in dialogue about the queerness of theology and science; authors might unsettle and queer authority in science, propose a queer African-American naturalism, or examine historical shifts in Colonialism alongside those in religion and science. Readers assuming what topics and approaches they will encounter are in for a surprise, as this book takes them on a wild ride, exploring a dizzying (but entirely necessary) variety of approaches to central topics and important problems at the complex intersection of religion and science.