A scholar of religion in American history, Kathryn Lofton has written extensively about capitalism, popular culture, and the secular. She is currently the Lex Hixon Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies and Professor of History and Divinity at Yale University.
Lofton’s talk, “The Pulpit of Reason: Transphobia as Religious Practice,” pronounces that being queer is not safe and discusses where that lack of safety begins, focusing on the relationship between trans politics and a specific movement, freethought. The freethinker’s ritual presentation requires standing at a pulpit determined by their claimed associations with and commitment to reason, and then correcting someone else’s view of themselves with a red pen in front of a crowd. Understanding trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), and their ability to declare what gender is and is not, requires a foray into the history of religions to perceive why this is such a tenacious prejudicial rite of modernity, and why violence is so often its outcome.
Lofton earned an A.B. in History and Religion and the Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2000, and her PhD in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005. Prior to her arrival at Yale as an assistant professor in 2009, she taught at Reed College, Indiana University, Bloomington, and was a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University.
This talk is part of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar series.
The College of Arts