In June 2023, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence went viral in conservative media for the umpteenth time. This time around, it was because the Los Angeles Dodgers had announced plans to honor the Los Angeles House of the order at the team’s annual Pride Night. A month before that all-California game against the San Francisco Giants, Florida Senator Marco Rubio had instigated the protest with a letter to baseball commissioner Robert Manfred claiming the group was offensive to Catholics. A short time into the swelling protest movement the Dodgers disinvited the Sisters, then re-invited them rather quickly following overwhelming backlash; in the end, the nuns’ presence at the game drew masses of protestors and supporters, and required a heavy security presence. Reporting on the scuffle focused on it largely as a story about sports, politics, and culture wars, not about religion, and it largely misrepresented or even overlooked the international order of queer and trans nuns at the heart of the story. So who are these nuns, and why do they keep winding up the right and delighting the left while most people on both sides miss the point that queer nuns, too, are real nuns? Come join us and find out.

Melissa M. Wilcox (any pronouns) is Professor and Holstein Family and Community Chair of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where Dr. Wilcox organizes the annual UCR Conference on Queer and Trans Studies in Religion and the Holstein Dissertation Fellowship. A specialist in the study of gender, sexuality, and religion in the Global North/Global West, Dr. Wilcox has authored or edited seven books, including most recently Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody; Queer Religiosities: An Introduction to Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion; and (with Nina Hoel and Liz Wilson) Religion, the Body, and Sexuality. Dr. Wilcox is founding co-editor with Ashon T. Crawley and Tamara C. Ho of the Hauntings book series at New York University Press and founding co-editor with Joseph A. Marchal of the new journal, QTR: A Journal of Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion. Dr. Wilcox’s current research is on religion and spirituality in queer and trans leather, BDSM, and kink communities.

Professor Wilcox’s talk is the first lecture in our series Reverent Irreverence:  Parody, Religion, and Contemporary Politics

As the counterculture of the 1960s churned, Harvard theologian Harvey Cox wrote of the dawning of a new religious sensibility reliant on “conscious play and comic equivocation.” Amid “dead gods” and “museum churches,” Cox suggested that laughter was religion’s last hope.  Parody was the potential vehicle of its rebirth.  Our program series on “Reverent Irreverence” digs into those paradoxical conjunctions and ironic possibilities.  How does religious parody, satire, or humor become serious, solemn, or sincere? How does a camp aesthetic intersect with the arts of dissent and protest among environmentalist, feminist, and LGBTQ+ communities? What makes such parodies so dangerous, blasphemous, or obscene—so politically charged amid the nation’s endless culture wars? Are the comic effects of such performances, however serious, ultimately a jest for liberal secularism? Please join us for a series of events this spring to explore the profound play among parody, religion, and contemporary American politics. 

This event is free and open to all, no tickets required. General admission seating—first come, first served. Doors will open at 4:00 p.m. We hope you will join us for a reception immediately following the conversation.

Visitor parking in the Danforth University Center (DUC) underground garage or the Millbrook parking facility is free after 5:00 p.m. in all yellow spaces (parking in red spaces will be ticketed). Parking passes or vouchers are not required. You will pull a ticket upon entry to the garage, which you will need for a no-fee exit of the garage when you depart. More information and campus maps are available at: https://parking.wustl.edu/.

Please contact our office at rap@wustl.edu or (314) 935-9345 if you have any questions or would like to share accessibility needs.

We are unable to offer a livestream of this event, but will archive a recording on our website for future viewing.