Brandy Daniels

Assistant Professor, Theology 

Before coming to UP Brandy Daniels was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the University of Virginia, where she taught interdisciplinary core courses that explored questions of difference and ethics. Brandy has a Ph.D. in religion from Vanderbilt University, and a M.Div. and A.M. from Duke University. Her scholarship explores the place of difference within communal identity and belonging, focusing on gender and sexual difference in religious thought and practice. Brandy has published on topics ranging from Bonhoeffer and Foucault on racial identity, to poststructuralism and liberation theology. Her current research project, a book manuscript entitled Who is the “We?” explores the ways in which accounts and practices of formation in modern Christianity, particularly within feminist theologies, impact gender and sexual difference. Her research shapes and is shaped by her teaching; she views the classroom as a formational site where community amidst difference can be interrogated, imagined, and inhabited—an occasion for transformative intellectual practice through engagement with texts, traditions, and theories. Brandy serves as co-chair of the Queer Studies in Religion unit of the American Academy of Religion as well as of the LGBTQ and Queer Studies interest group for the Society of Christian Ethics. Brandy is under-care for ordination with the Disciples of Christ (Christian Church). She is also an avid slow runner and Jeopardy fan.