LGBTQIA+ Scholars Series: Queer Art, the Christian Right, and the Aesthetics of Literalism

Featuring Dr. Anthony Petro, Associate Professor of Religion and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Director of the Health Humanities Project

During the height of the U.S. culture wars in the 1980s and 1990s, it became common practice for conservative Christian leaders to attack art dealing with issues of religion, gender, race, and sexuality as pornographic or sacrilegious, if not specifically anti-Christian. Indeed, many feminist and queer artists drew upon aesthetic forms borrowed from the rich visual history of Christianity, and of Roman Catholicism specifically, often in ways that seemed to profane religious symbols.

This talk focuses on the work of artist and author David Wojnarowicz and his legal battles with the American Family Association's Donald Wildmon to examine the contours of such debates, demonstrating competing struggles to define the place of religion, art, and interpretation in the public sphere.