{"id":8224,"date":"2024-06-12T18:12:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T22:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cura\/?post_type=profile&p=8224"},"modified":"2024-07-19T08:42:08","modified_gmt":"2024-07-19T12:42:08","slug":"anthony-petro","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cura\/profile\/anthony-petro\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Petro"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Petro is an associate professor in the Department of Religion and in the\u00a0Women\u2019s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program<\/a>. From 2020 to 2023, I was also BU\u2019s Distinguished Teaching Professor, a chair endowed by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which allowed me to do many things, one of which was to found BU\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Health Humanities Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My teaching and research interests include the history of religion in United States; religion,\u00a0medicine, and public health; and gender and sexuality studies. My first book,\u00a0After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion<\/em>\u00a0(Oxford University Press, 2015), examines the history of American religious responses to the HIV\/AIDS crisis and their role in the promotion of ongoing forms of what I call \u201cmoral citizenship.\u201d I\u2019ve also written several essays dealing with Catholic studies, disability, secularism, and feminist and queer studies.<\/p>\n

I am currently writing a book called\u00a0Provoking Religion: Sex, Art<\/em>,\u00a0and the Culture Wars\u00a0<\/em>(under contract with Oxford University Press), which traces heated debates over sex, art, race, and religion to reveal competing genealogies of the sacred and the secular in the modern U.S. It explores how a range of feminist and queer artists have engaged religious themes and ritual in their work, spanning from Judy Chicago\u2019s 1979\u00a0The Dinner Party<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>and Ray Navarro\u2019s role in ACT UP\u2019s\u00a0Stop the Church<\/em>\u00a0demonstration to Renee Cox\u2019s\u00a0Yo Mama\u2019s Last Supper<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>and the 2010 controversy surrounding David Wojnarowicz\u2019s\u00a0A Fire in My Belly<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span>Provoking Religion<\/em>\u00a0asks how this archive of visual and performance art helps us to rethink key categories in the study of religion and in gender and sexuality studies and develops an analysis of what I call the \u201caesthetics of literalism\u201d that is dominant in culture wars rhetoric. I spent\u00a0the 2019-2020 academic year working on this project while in residence at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.<\/p>\n

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