Wendy Mallette

Home institution

University of Oklahoma

Research project

Lesbian Feminist Killjoys: Sin, Pessimism, and Queer Histories

This project on the nexus of sin, sex, and race draws the archives of lesbian feminist public cultures of the 1960s-1980s into conversation with the doctrine of sin in order to unsettle familiar histories and challenge us to grapple with the noninnocence, and perhaps even depravity, of our desires.

Profile

Wendy Mallette is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She earned her PhD in religious studies and a graduate certificate in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from Yale University after receiving an MAR from Yale Divinity School and a BA from Valparaiso University. She is currently working on a book manuscript that draws on the archives of lesbian feminist public cultures of the 1960s through 1980s to intervene in conversations around negativity, sin, and affect in queer studies and religious studies. More broadly, her research brings critical theories of gender, sexuality, race, and animality to bear on questions of doctrine and method in religious studies and Christian theology. 

Her published work can be found in Women’s Studies Quarterly, the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, Feminist Theology, and Religion Dispatches. She teaches courses, including "Queer Religion; Animals, Art, and Religion," "Introduction to Christianity," and "Introduction to Religious Studies."

Course

HDS 2778: Sex, Sin, and Race (Fall 2024)