People

Kristy Slominski

Co-Director

Dr. Kristy Slominski (Ph.D. in Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies and Classics. She specializes in the interactions of religions, science, and health in U.S. history as well as the intersections of U.S. religions and sexuality, with a focus on sexual health education. She is a faculty member within her department's concentration in Religious Studies for Health Professionals, where she teaches courses on religion and health (RELI 303 and RELI 406/506), religion and science (RELI/PHIL 326), religion and sexuality (RELI 363), and world religions (RELI 160D4). She has recently been awarded the inaugural Dorrance Dean's Award for Research and Entrepreneurialism for her project to develop "Health Humanities Training in Religion and Culture" for medical and nursing students. She is the Co-Director, along with Dr. Alison Jameson, of the Institute for the Study of Religion and Culture.

Her recent book, Teaching Moral Sex: A History of Religion and Sex Education in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2021), examines religious contributions to public sex education from the late nineteenth century to the present, especially around issues of sexually transmitted diseases. It argues that liberal religions—primarily Protestant—laid historical foundations for both the conservative and liberal sides of contemporary controversies between abstinence-only and comprehensive sexuality education. As important players within mainstream movements for sex education, ministers and ecumenical organizations like the Federal Council of Churches strategically combined progressive and restrictive approaches to science and sexuality, influencing major shifts and divisions in venereal disease education. She has published essays based on her book in Aeon and The Immanent Frame and has been featured on podcasts The Revealer and Straight White American Jesus.

Slominski previously served on the Board of Directors for the American Academy of Religion (AAR). She is currently a co-chair of the AAR's Religions, Medicines, and Healing unit and a member on the Academic Labor and Contingent Faculty Committee. She is also on the leadership team for Religion, Health, and Humanities Researchers (RHHR), a new global network of scholars interested in the medical and health humanities with a focus on spirituality and religion. 

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In Memoriam

Peter Foley

Founding Director

Peter Foley (1961-2016) grew up in Germany and England, and published both in English and German. He held a B. A. Honours degree from the University of Keele (1985), an M. A. from Northwestern (1986) and a Dr. phil. magna cum laude from the University of Vienna (1990). He taught at the University of Economics in Vienna, and came to the University of Arizona in 1992 where he taught in the German Department (now German studies) and interdisciplinary studies in the Humanities Program. In 2005 he joined the Religious Studies Program, and in Spring 2008 he was Acting Director of Religious Studies; in Fall 2008 he was Canon Symmonds Memorial Scholar at St. Deiniol’s Library in Wales.

The focus of Prof. Foley’s work was on the history of ideas in philosophy and theological thought. He published books on the Austro-German Catholic theologian and economist Adam Müller (1990) and on the German Reformed and Lutheran theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (2006). For the latter book he was awarded the Adele Mellen Prize for a Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship at the 2006 American Academy of Religion Conference. He also published on Civil Rights for Jews in Germany in 1799 (Theologische Literaturzeitung, 2001), Schleiermacher’s Romantic Philosophy (Das neue Licht der Frühromantik, 2009). He had an accepted article on Jeremy Collier’s Desertion Discuss’d of 1688 (Festschrift for Susan Karant-Nunn, 2014). He passed away in December of 2016.