Anthony Michael Petro is a faculty member in the BU Department of Religion and the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program. He serves as Director of Graduate Studies for the Graduate Program in Religion, coordinator of the BU Health Humanities Project, and the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor.
His teaching and research interests include religion and culture in the United States; religion, medicine, and public health; and gender and sexuality. His first book, After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion, examines the history of American religious responses to the HIV/AIDS crisis and their role in the promotion of ongoing forms of moral citizenship. He has published essays on topics, including histories of Catholic sexual abuse, disability studies and religion, the religious politics of camp, and approaches to studying race, gender, and sexuality in North American religion. His ongoing research engages questions about religion and secularism, the cultural politics of morality, and religious formations of bodies.
Petro’s current book project, under contract with Oxford University Press, is titled Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Sacred in the Modern United States and traces debates over sex, art, and religion and examines competing genealogies of the sacred and the secular in the modern U.S., especially during the heyday of the culture wars.
Learn more about his activities and research at his profile page on BU Department of Religion website.