Kori Pacyniak

Kori Pacyniak holds a B.A. from Smith College with a double major in Religion and Biblical Literature and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School, an S.T.M. from Boston University School of Theology, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California Riverside in the Study of Religion with a focus on queer and trans studies in religion. Their work focuses on the intersections of gender, sexuality, religion, and embodiment. Kori’s dissertation, Sacred Bodies, Sacred Lives: Trans Catholic Joy, Resistance, and Liberation, took an ethnographic and autoethnographic approach to explore how trans communities navigate institutional religion through ritual practice, theological imagination, and embodied forms of spiritual authority, foregrounding the voices of transgender Catholics and making interventions in ritual theory and ethics. Their research investigates how religious meaning is produced through bodies, objects, institutions, media, and everyday practices, and they are particularly interested in how marginalized communities create alternative religious futures under conditions of exclusion and regulation. In addition to their work on trans Catholicism, they study speculative fiction, gaming cultures, fandom, and digital media as sites of queer and trans world-building and contemporary mythmaking. Their scholarship and public commentary on LGBTQ+ inclusion in Catholicism have been featured in national and regional media outlets including The Washington Post, CBS, and The New Yorker.