Carly Daniel-Hughes, ThD, M.Div, MA
- Professor, Religions and Cultures
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Sign in to editResearch areas: Women, Gender and Sexuality in Religious Studies; Queer Theory and Cultural Studies; Feminist Theory; History of Christianity; Early Christianity; Roman Empire
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Biography
Professor Daniel-Hughes’ research has contributed to the study of the body, gender, and sexuality in Christian late antiquity, particularly the history of sex work and the reception of Paul's letters related to these themes. She is author of The Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage: Dressing for the Resurrection (Palgrave 2011), various edited volumes, and her work has appeared in Biblical Interpretation, Journal of Early Christian Studies, and Studies in Religion.
Her current book project is provisionally entitled Encounters with Early Christian “Women”: Feminism’s History. It illustrates how various early Christian figures, such as Mary Magdalene, Thecla, the Virgin Mary, and Saint Agnes, circulated with Anglo-American feminist thought from the 19th century until today. Playing with, and ultimately unsettling, the “waves” of feminism, it asks: how did, and do, feminist aspirations and disappointments get articulated around these historical figures? Offering a critical reflection on feminist historiography, the book also engages Black feminist thought and trans studies in order to offer new analytics for feminist treatments of Christian antiquity, and as a means to consider the emancipatory claims, limits, and ongoing challenges of this historical work.
A devoted teacher, Dr. Daniel-Hughes has supervised numerous PhD and MA students. She is also the winner of two university-wide teaching awards.
Teaching activities
Recent Courses
Graduate:
Reli 6006 "Christian Bodies" (Winter 2021 and 2023)
Reli 6006 "Queering the Bible" (Fall 2019 and Winter 2024)
Undergraduate:
Reli 223 "Introduction to Christianity"
Reli 382 "Women, Gender, and Sexuality: Christianity"
Reli 320 "The Making of Christianity"
Selected publications
Select (Recent) Publications
2025 “Adornments of Empire: Early Christian Dress and the Colonial
Composition of Gender.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 35.2, pp.174-97.
2023 “The Apostle of Failure: Queer Refusal, the Corinthian Letters and Paul’s Unflattering Characterization in the Acts of Thecla.” Biblical Interpretation 31.4, pp. 473-495.
2022 “Abolition Mommas: Evangelical Women as Exceptional Citizens in the Fight to End “Global Sex Trafficking,” Pages 8-28 in ‘An Outrage Against any Decent People’: Religious Responses to Sex Work and Sex Trafficking. Lauren McGrow and Yvonne Zimmerman, eds. New York: Routledge Press.
2020 “Prostitution,” Pages 645-660 in The Oxford Handbook of New
Testament, Gender, and Sexuality. Benjamin Dunning, eds. New
York: Oxford University Press.
2019 “Mary Magdalene in the Fantasy Echo: Reflections on the Feminist Historiography of Early Christianity,” Pages 135-158 in Re-Making the World: Categories and Early Christianity. Essays in Honor of Karen L. King. Carly Daniel-Hughes, Benjamin Dunning, Laura Nasrallah, and AnneMarie Luijendijk, eds. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.