{"id":9483,"date":"2022-02-08T14:09:23","date_gmt":"2022-02-08T18:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/religion\/?post_type=profile&p=9483"},"modified":"2025-07-09T09:05:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T13:05:23","slug":"anthony-petro","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/religion\/faculty\/anthony-petro\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Petro"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

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\u00a0Health 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 finishing up 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>\u00a0and Ray Navarro\u2019s role in ACT UP\u2019s\u00a0Stop the Church<\/em>\u00a0demonstration to Renee Cox\u2019s\u00a0Yo Mama\u2019s Last Supper<\/em>\u00a0and the 2010 controversy surrounding David Wojnarowicz\u2019s\u00a0A Fire in My Belly<\/em>.\u00a0Provoking 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 became 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

My current research includes a biography of the queer Catholic writer Kathryn Hulme and essays on visual artists Paul Thek and Christian Walker.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

CV<\/a><\/p>\n

Books<\/h2>\n

\"afterthewrathofgod\"<\/a>After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion
\n<\/em>By: Anthony M. Petro
\nJuly 1, 2015
\nOxford University Press
\nBuy it now from Amazon<\/a> or OUP<\/a>!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After the Wrath of God: An Interview with Anthony Petro<\/a><\/p>\n

Courses<\/strong><\/h2>\n
    \n
  • RN100 Introduction to Religion<\/li>\n
  • RN111 Multireligious America<\/li>\n
  • RN209 Religion, Health and Medicine<\/li>\n
  • RN212 Christianity<\/li>\n
  • CC222 \u201cUnmaking\u201d the Modern World<\/li>\n
  • RN368 American Evangelicalism<\/li>\n
  • RN427\/WS305 Topics in American Religion (Religion and Sexuality<\/em>)<\/li>\n
  • RN450 Topics in Rel, Science, & Med (Religion, Health, & the Body<\/em>)<\/li>\n
  • RN450 Topics in Rel, Science, & Med (AIDS, Art, & Religion in America<\/em>)<\/li>\n
  • RN452 Topics in Religious Thought (Religion, Secularism, & Power<\/em>)<\/li>\n
  • RN453\/WS305 Topics in Religious & Sexuality (Sex, Art, & the Sacred<\/em>)<\/li>\n
  • RN454\/WS454 Sexuality and Religion in the U.S.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"author":1630,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/9483"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1630"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/9483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11653,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/9483\/revisions\/11653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}