Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Award

To encourage and support original research and study of LGBTQ religious history, LGBTQ-RAN offers an annual award for papers, the Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Award. Initiated in 2005, this award honors outstanding scholarship in LGBTQ religious history from among an array of academic papers submitted. The Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Award is the only award offered in this academic arena.

This award was named for Virginia Ramey Mollenkott in 2022 in collaboration with Virginia’s friends and colleagues who generously established a memorial fund to underwrite this award. Dr. Mollenkott had a profound impact upon the lives of countless LGBTQ persons and their families and friends during her four decades of courageous witness and advocacy. It is fitting that Virginia’s legacy will support the endeavors of young queer scholars in religion for years to come.

Submission Guidelines →

2023-24 Honoree

Austin Steelman for his paper "Not an 'Ordinary Man:' J. Gresham Machen and the Un-Queering of Evangelical Theology."

• Steelman's paper was published in Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation (online from Cambridge University Press on March 30, 2023).
• Press Release
• Interview with Austin Steelman at the March 6, 2024 Mollenkott Award presentation.

2022-23 Honoree

Wallace Best, Ph.D. for his paper "Everybody Knew He Was 'That Way:' Chicago's Clarence H. Cobbs, American Religion and Sexuality During the Post World War II Period."

• Best's paper was published as a chapter in The Sexual Politics of Black Churches, edited by Josef Sorett (Columbia University Press: 2022).
• Press Release
• Interview with Wallace Best at the March 8, 2023 Mollenkott Award presentation.

2021-2022 Honoree

Katie Hemphill, Ph.D. for her paper, “’Pastor Was Trapped:’ Queer Scandal and Contestations Over Christian Anti-Vice Reform”

• Press Release
• Interview with Katie Hemphill, Ph.D.

2020-2021 Honoree

Dan Royles, Ph.D. for his paper, "There Is a Balm in Gilead: AIDS Activism in the Black Church."

Honorable mention to William Stell for his paper, "From Neighbors to Outcasts: Evangelical Gay Activism in the Late 1970s."

• Press Release
• Interview with Dan Royles, Ph.D.

2019-2020 Honoree

Suzanna Krivulskaya, Ph.D. for her paper, “’Queer’ Rumors: Protestant Pastors, Unnatural Deeds, and Church Censure in the Twentieth-Century United States.”

• Krivulskaya's paper was published in Religion and America Culture, vol. 31, issue 1.
• LGBTQ-RAN press release
• CSUSM announcement

2018-2019 Honoree

K. Mohrman, Ph.D for her paper, “Becoming White: Theologizing Heteronormativity in Mormonism, 1890-1945.”

• Press Release

2017-2018 Honoree

The jury decided not to award a submitted paper this year. 

2016-2017 Honoree

The jury decided not to award a submitted paper this year.

2015-2016 Honoree

Bruce Dorsey, Ph.D. for his paper, "'Making Men What They Should Be:' Male Same-Sex Intimacy and Evangelical Religion in Early Nineteenth-Century New England"

• Dr. Dorsey's paper (published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality; subscription required)

Honorable mention to Judith Weisenfeld, Ph.D. for her paper, "'Real True Buds:' Celibacy and Same-Sex Desire Across the Color Line in Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement"

• Press Release

2014-2015 Honoree

Brett Krutzsch for his paper, "The Martyrdom of Matthew Shepard"

• Brett Krutzsch's paper (published in Dying to be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics)

Honorable Mention to Lynne Gerber for her paper, "How to Have Christmas in an Epidemic"

• Press Release

2013-2014 Honoree

The jury decided not to award a submitted paper this year

2012-13 Honoree

Timothy Willem Jones, Ph.D. for his paper, "The Stained Glass Closet: Celibacy and Homosexuality in the Church of England to 1955"

• Jones' paper (published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality; subscription required)
• Press Release

2011-12 Co-Honorees

Rebecca L. Davis for her paper, "'My Homosexuality Is Getting Worse Every Day': Norman Vincent Peale, Psychiatry, and the Liberal Protestant Response to Same-Sex Desires in Mid-Twentieth-Century America," 

• Davis' paper (published in American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity).

Anthony Petro for his paper, "Protest Religion! ACT UP, Religious Freedom and the Ethics of Sex."

• Petro's paper (published in After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, & American Religion)
• Press Release

2010-11 Honoree

The jury decided not to award a submitted paper this year.

2009-10 Honoree

Shaun Jacob Halper for his paper, "Fashioning a Gay Jewish Identity in Interwar Prague: The Case of Jiří Langer (1894-1943)." 

• Halper's paper (published as "Coming Out of the Hasidic Closet: Jiří Mordechai Langer (1894-1943) and the Fashioning a Homosexual-Jewish Identity" in the Jewish Quarterly Review; subscription required)
• Halper's comments at the award dinner
• Press Release

2008-09 Honoree

The jury decided not to award a submitted paper this year.

2007-08 Honoree

Heather Rachelle White, Ph.D. for her paper, "From Sin to Sickness: Pastoral Counseling and the Sex Variant, 1946-1963."

• White's paper (published in revised form in Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights)
• White's comments at the award dinner
• Press Release

2006-07 Honoree

Kathryn Lofton, Ph.D. for her paper, "Queering Fundamentalism: The Case of John Balcom Shaw (1860-1935)."

• Lofton's paper (published as "Queering Fundamentalism: John Balcom Shaw and the Sexuality of a Protestant Orthodoxy" in the Journal of the History of Sexuality; subscription required)
• Lofton's award presentation
• Press Release

2005-06 Honoree

Michelle Sauer, Ph.D. for paper entitled "Representing the Negative: Positing the Lesbian Void in Medieval English Anchoritism."

• Sauer's paper (published online in thirdspace)
• Press Release