Dr. Claudia Schippert Associate Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies   University of Central Florida
	For advising in Religious Studies, please contact Dr. Sabatino DiBernardo or Ms. Cathy Baust for information and assistance.

Department of Philosophy	Office:  PSY241
Orlando, FL 32816-1352	e-mail: claudiaschippert@gmail.com
Office Phone: 407-823-4624  Department Phone:  407-823-2273	Office Hours: Mondays 11am-12pm Wednesday 2pm-4pm

Upcoming Courses at UCF

Fall 2011: REL 2300: “World Religions” HUM3930H: “Honors ST: Bad Taste” PHM3022: “Sex, Gender, and Philosophy” Spring 2012: HUM4823: “Queer Theory in the Humanities” WST5601: “Theories in Gender Studies”

Biography	Claudia Schippert has been in UCF’s Philosophy Department in Humanities and Religious Studies since 2001. She directed the Religious Studies Program at UCF from 2002 to 2010. Dr. Schippert’s research interests are in the areas of American cultural studies, religion in America, feminist and queer theories, feminist ethics, and comparative approaches to bodies and sexualities. Her research focuses on theoretical approaches to American religion and culture as explored through the lens of gender and sexuality. Dr. Schippert completed her graduate work at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she received her Ph.D. in Religion along with a Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies.  Her dissertation, "Transgressive Bodies, Queer Ethics:  A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation about Resistance," explored questions of agency and practical resistance at the intersection of Christian feminist liberation ethics and the emerging discourse of queer theory.
Current Research	Dr. Schippert has been granted a sabbatical for Fall 2010 and Spring 2011. She will be working on a project tentatively titled Queer Discipline in which she builds on Michel Foucault’s assertion that mechanisms of discipline (most obviously visible in the heteronormative organization of sexuality, in schools, and in prisons) have shaped our social and individual practices to such an extent that they have become foundational to being a modern self, while making our very being conditional on becoming “docile bodies.” Queer theoretical work in cultural studies has sought to analyze and resist these normalizing mechanisms with an eye to the role that gender and sexuality, and in Dr. Schippert’s work also religion, play within the larger operations of discipline. Queer Discipline examines three areas of individual and social practices that, although they are “disciplined,” i.e. they deploy forms of discipline, can potentially resist, transgress, or queer the expected self-normalizing effects within dominant social or political contexts.  From hypermuscular bodies to teaching religion in a public university, from drag queens and Miss America pageants to meditation classes taught in prisons, from the bodies of teachers in universities to the representation of incarcerated bodies on TV, Dr. Schippert examines how disciplines shape our cultural imaginary and, in turn, shape social and political practices.
Research Interests and Past Publications	The central focus of Schippert’s research in queer theory and religion is the body: how bodies are discursively constructed in religious traditions as well as in American culture; how popular culture and various media affect representations and practices of bodies; and how these questions can be pursued in ways that call attention to the role of gender, race, and sexuality in contemporary society. Publications include “Saint Mychal: A Virtual Saint,”  in Journal of Media and Religion (2007). “Can Muscles Be Queer?  Reconsidering the Transgressive Hyper-Built Body,” Journal of Gender Studies16.2 (2007),  “Turning On/To Ethics,” in Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler, Armour/St.Ville, eds., Columbia UP (2006); “Containing Uncertainty: Sexual Values and Citizenship,” Journal of Homosexuality 52, 1/2 (in ‘The Contested Terrain of LGBT Studies and Queer Theory’; simultaneously published as an edited book by The Haworth Press); “Critical Projection and Queer Performativity: Self-Revelation and Teaching/Learning Otherness” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 28, 3/4 (2006) ; “Sporting Heroic Bodies in a Christian Nation-at-War” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 5 (2003), and “Queer Theory” in The Encyclopedia of Women and World Religions (1998). Among her international publications are “Spielerisch Queer” (Playfully Queer) FAMA: Feministisch-theologische Zeitschrift (Journal for Feminist Theology) 22.2, and “Queer Theory and the Study of Religion.” Rever [Revista de Estudos da Religião] 5.4.  and a chapter in Theologie und Geschlecht: Dialog querbet (Theology and Gender), a  book by the Network for Gender-Conscious Theology in German-Speaking European Countries (2008). Dr. Schippert  received the “Women’s Research Center Award in the Arts and Humanities” in 2005 for “Performing High Femininity: Dragging Femininity Across Generations,” a project that explores the performance of high femininity by beauty pageant contestants and by drag queens.  She presented part of her research at the First Annual Conference for Camp Studies in San Francisco (October 2006). She continues to be interested in the performative aspects of gender. Additional ongoing research interests include: - Queer Popular Culture - Queer Pedagogy - Mindfulness Research
Professional Activity	Dr. Schippert regularly presents papers at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, where she has served on the steering committee for "Religion and the Social Sciences" for six year. She now co-chairs the “Queer Studies in Religion Consultation.” Dr.Schippert is also a member of the American Studies Association (ASA), the Popular Culture Association (PCA/ACA) and Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST).