Tuesday, March 25, 2025, 5:00pm CST

Hybrid

FREE

co-hosted by: LGBTQ Religious Archives Network, Chicago Theological Seminary, and Meadville-Lombard Theological School.

This Year’s Mollenkott Awardee

Achille Marotta, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral research fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He was trained in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics, but soon after graduating he turned to history, inspired by his late uncle’s amateur historical work on his family’s Southern Italian village. In his award-winning paper, “The Muslim Friend: Cross-Confessional Male Intimacy in Eighteenth-Century Italy” delves into sodomy trials in eighteenth-century Genoa, in which a surprisingly large number of cases prosecuted relations between Christian and Muslim men.  Using these and other court records, Marotta argues that anxieties over male-male sexuality crossed over with worries about religious intermixing. Marotta’s work reveals how men of different faiths could build enduring bonds of affection and mutual obligation that closely resembled ties of kinship.

Read the full press release about the award here.

Marotta will be interviewed by: 

Ken Stone, Ph.D. is Distinguished Service Professor and Professor of Bible, Culture and Hermeneutics at Chicago Theological Seminary.   A former Lambda Literary Award winner, Stone is the author of Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex, and Bible in Queer Perspective (2005) and Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies (2018) and co-editor, with Teresa Hornsby, of Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship (2011).

Other speakers will include:

Rev. Pamela Lightsey, Ph.D. is a womanist theologian and senior administrator and scholar in higher education. She currently serves as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Meadville Lombard Theological School and Associate Professor of Constructive Theology. Before her appointment at Meadville, she was Associate Dean at Boston University School of Theology. As ordained clergy, Rev. Dr. Lightsey has been among the leading voices fighting for LGBTQ rights in the United Methodist Church. She was the first out queer lesbian African American ordained elder in full connection in the denomination.

Mx Chris Paige, M.Div., C.C. is a scholar, an interfaith chaplain, and a religious organizer. Mx Chris became friends with Virginia Mollenkott over more than 30 years through Evangelical and Ecumenical Women’s Caucus, Christian Lesbians Out, and Transfaith. After moving to New Jersey, Chris was able to visit Virginia in her retirement and was especially proud that Virginia made an online appearance to help launch OtherWise Christian: A Guide to Transgender Liberation (2019).