Siobhan Kelly
Contact Info
Biography —
Siobhan Kelly is a scholar and theorist of trans studies and the study of religion. Before joining KU as Assistant Professor of Trans Studies in 2025, Siobhan received their PhD in Religion from Harvard University and served as a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Siobhan’s scholarship looks at the relationship between religious rhetoric, transphobia in feminist theory, trans studies, and broader popular discourses of gender, sexuality, and transition. Their work has appeared in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and Theology & Sexuality, and is forthcoming in the edited collection Political Theology Reimagined: Theories, Ruptures, Itineraries (Duke University Press, 2025). Siobhan is interested in trans, queer, and feminist theory; psychoanalysis and deconstruction; theories and methods in the study of religion; how religious language is used to both defend and assail queer and trans life; and 20thand 21st century queer and trans art, film, and literature.
Siobhan is currently working on two book projects. The first, Public Parts: Fetishism and Genitality, looks at flashpoints in the sprawling discourses of “fetishism” and the recurrent appearance of genitals therein in order to articulate a generalized theory of genitality and genital envy. The second, Trans Antagonism: On Engaging Transphobia, or Not, looks at how we read and understand transphobia within feminist thinking and, pursuing what might happen if we allow ourselves to treat such irruptions of phobia antagonistically.
In Spring of 2026 Siobhan will offer WGSS 501: Feminist Research and WGSS 396: Angels and Monsters: Queer and Trans Religion.
Research —
- Feminist, queer, and trans theories
- Religious studies
- Psychoanalysis and deconstruction
- 20th and 21st century American religious culture
- Critiques of identity
- Queer and trans cultural production
- Theories of difference
Selected Publications —
“Political Theology’s Gender Trouble” In Political Theology Reimagined: Theories, Ruptures, Itineraries, edited by Vincent Lloyd and Alex Dubilet. Duke University Press, 2025.
“The Gender Matrix: On the Prohibitions Against Intersexuality and Transsexuality.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 92 no. 3 (September 2024): 455-463. (Roundtable on Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity at Thirty—or Thirty-Five, co-edited with Amy Hollywood. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfaf005.
“Messianic Language in Trans Public Speech.” Theology & Sexuality 24:2 (Spring 2018): 110-127. https://doi.org/10.1080/13558358.2018.1463639.
“Multiplicity and Contradiction: A Literature Review of Trans* Studies in Religion.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 34:1 (Spring 2018 Special Issue: Transing and Queering Feminist Studies and Practices of Religion): 7-23. https://doi.org/10.2979/jfemistudreli.34.1.03.