Taylor Grant Petrey

Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Sexuality 2016–17
WSRP Research Associate 2016–17
Tyler Grant Petrey, 2016-17 WSRP Research Associate

Home institution

Kalamazoo College

Research project

Divining Gender: Mormonism and Sexual Difference

This project is a historical and theological treatment of gender and sexuality in Mormonism. Utilizing poststructuralist theories of gender and sexuality, it explores the instability of male and female, homosexual and heterosexual in the Mormon tradition.

Course

HDS 2119: Gender, Sexuality, and Mormonism

Profile

Dr. Taylor Petrey is the Lucinda Hinsdale Stone Associate Professor of Religion at Kalamazoo College and is director of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality program. His research while at the WSRP titled, “Divining Gender: Mormonism and Sexual Difference,” is a historical and theological treatment that explores the instability of male and female, homosexual and heterosexual in the Mormon tradition. This research focuses on the theological archetypes in Mormon theology and the social and historical changes in Mormon discourse and practices of marriage, the regulation of sexuality, and ecclesiastical roles for women. His prior research has explored Mormon theologies of a divine feminine, non-normative kinship, and theories of gender.

Dr. Petrey received his ThD from Harvard Divinity School in 2010 specializing in New Testament and Early Christianity. His first book, Resurrecting Parts: Early Christians on Desire, Reproduction, and Sexual Difference (Routledge, 2015), examines the place of gender and sexuality in early Christian debates on the nature of resurrection and investigates how writers of this period interpreted the resurrected body in order to address the nature of sexuality and sexual difference.