Anthony Petro

Anthony Petro is an associate professor in the Department of Religion and in the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program, for which he serves as the Director of Graduate Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University and MA from the University of Chicago. A first-generation college student, he is also a proud alum of Georgia State University in Atlanta. His teaching and research interests include religion and politics in the United States; religion, medicine, and public health; and gender and sexuality studies. His first book, After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion (Oxford University Press, 2015), examined the history of religious responses to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States. His current book project, Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Sacred (under contract with Oxford University Press) looks at heated debates over controversial art to narrate the ongoing historical struggle to define the sacred’s relationship to the political in U.S. public culture. Outside BU, Anthony serves as the co-chair for the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality at MIT and will soon begin serving on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.