6/14/2010 –The Human Rights Campaign – the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization – today announced the winners of the inaugural Scholarship & Mentorship Program for Religion and Theological Study. The program, part of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Religion and Faith Program, provides a sustained investment in the next generation of religion scholars working on LGBT issues, and will change the national conversation about LGBT people and religion.
The LGBT Dissertation Scholarship provides a stipend of $15,000 for a doctoral student with an expressed interest in furthering LGBT religious and theological study. In addition to financial assistance, the scholarship provides one-on-one mentoring opportunity with a respected scholar.
The Summer Institute is an intensive five day institute for 14 participants studying LGBT issues at the master’s and doctoral level. This year the Summer Institute will be held at Vanderbilt University School of Divinity. Students will work with prominent scholars of religion, public theologians, and media experts to explore how their scholarship can fuel a new dialogue on LGBT equality and religion in their schools, seminaries, congregations, and communities.
“HRC’s Scholarship and Mentorship program has the potential to transform in profound and lasting ways the training ground for theologians and students of religion,” said Harry Knox, director of HRC’s Religion and Faith Program. “By providing these extraordinarily talented students a chance to network with each other and to envision their scholarship as serving the widest possible marketplace, we cultivate a new understanding of sexual orientation, gender identity and religion and effectively counter the repressive environment in which so many students are currently trained.”
“The depth and range of scholarship exhibited by these students is simply startling. The breadth of backgrounds and the diversity of projects speaks to a stirring in our schools of divinity, religious studies programs and seminaries for new understandings of LGBT people and religion,” said Dr. Sharon Groves, deputy director or HRC’s Religion and Faith program. ##
Visit www.hrc.org/seminary to learn more about HRC’s Scholarship and Mentorship Program. Names and biographies of the winners of the inaugural Scholarship & Mentorship Program for Religion and Theological Study follow:
Thelathia Young, Winner of the Inaugural Dissertation Scholarship
Her dissertation, “Black Queer Ethics: An Investigation into the Ethical Norms of Kinship and Family,” is a work of Christian social ethics that investigates moral norms of kinship and family that foreground the intersection of race, gender and sexuality. Ms. Young is finishing her doctorate this year in Ethics and Society at Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion.
HRC’s Summer Institute
Class of 2010
- Rev. Sofia Betancourt is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister currently working on a doctorate at Yale University in Religious Ethics and African American Studies.
- Rev. Julianne Buenting is a doctoral student at Chicago Theological Seminary. Her work focuses on the intersection between queer studies and Christian practical theology, specifically worship and ritual practice.
- Brandy Daniels will be beginning her PhD work in Theology, Ethics and Human Sciences at Chicago Theological Seminary this fall. She intends to study Christian theology, gender and sexuality.
- Robyn Henderson-Espinoza is a doctoral student at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO studying social ethics with a primary interest in queering Latino/a social ethics.
- Tadhi Coulter is currently finishing up a Masters of Divinity at Vanderbilt University School of Divinity. His scholarship is rooted in African and African American studies with a primary emphasis on anthropology of race, African American performances and spiritual traditions.
- Malachi Kosanovich is a third year student in the Masters of Divinity at Wake Forest University focusing on Queer Theory and Theology.
- Peter Anthony Mena is a doctoral student at Drew University Theological School. His research centers on the history of Christianity in late antiquity; gender, sexuality, the body in late antiquity; and constructions of orthodoxy and heresy.
- Sara Rosenau is a doctoral student at Drew University Theological School. Her scholarly interest is in pragmatic, justice-oriented theology that combines contemporary social theory with the experiences of marginalized peoples.
- Rev. Cody J. Sanders is a PhD student in pastoral theology and pastoral counseling at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas. Cody is an ordained minister in the Alliance of Baptists and interested in the intersections of pastoral theology with queer theory.
- Barbara Schwartz will begin her doctoral studies this fall at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary pursuing a PhD in theology, ethics and history.
- Miak Siew is completing a Masters of Divinity at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. He is from Singapore and is interested in LGBT religious advocacy and public education in Singapore.
- Rev. Teresa L. Smallwood, Esq. is a doctoral student at Howard University School of Divinity. She is particularly interested in thinking critically about how scholarship may be used to more intensely engage young adults in faith.
- Krista Wuertz is a doctoral student at Claremont School of Theology. Her research focus is spiritual care and counseling. She is currently writing a book about her childhood experience growing up with lesbian parents in the late 1970s and 1980s.
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