Anthony Petro, an associate professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, has turned the academic spotlight onto his second monograph, Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars. Published by Oxford University Press in 2025, the work investigates how conservative Christian forces of the late twentieth century confronted emerging sexual and gender norms by targeting feminist and queer artists. Petro’s research argues that these creators did not merely clash with the sacred; they offered alternative visions of spirituality that reshaped public discourse.
Award recognitions for Provoking Religion
The book garnered three notable accolades. First, the American Academy of Religion granted it the 2026 Religion and the Arts Book Award, praising Petro’s ability to blend stylistic analysis with a nuanced reading of religious motifs. The Popular Culture Association followed with its Best Single Work, Anthology, Multi-Authored, or Edited Book in LGBTQ Studies award, highlighting the manuscript’s relevance to gender and sexuality scholarship. Finally, the British Association of American Studies offered an honorable mention, acknowledging the book’s contribution to transatlantic studies of American culture. Together, these honors illustrate the interdisciplinary appeal of Petro’s approach.
The book’s central thesis: redefining the sacred-political divide
Rather than framing the 1980s clash as a simple battle between the religious and the secular, Petro proposes that the culture wars were a contest over how the sacred could be expressed within the public sphere. He demonstrates that artists labeled “sacrilegious” or “pornographic” by conservative media were, in fact, constructing new spiritual narratives that challenged dominant theological interpretations. By positioning feminist, queer, and avant-garde works as genuine expressions of faith, Petro reframes the era as a struggle to define the relationship between the sacred and the political not merely a moral panic.
Petro’s broader scholarship and upcoming project
Provoking Religion builds on Petro’s earlier monograph, After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion which examined how the AIDS crisis intersected with religious discourse in the United States. Both books reveal a consistent scholarly trajectory that weaves together U.S. religious history gender studies, and visual culture. Currently, Petro is drafting a cultural biography titled Wild Devotions centered on Catholic author Kathryn Hulme, best known for The Nun’s Story. This forthcoming work promises to extend his investigation of how faith, sexuality, and popular media intertwine across the twentieth century. Petro credits the collaborative atmosphere of Notre Dame’s American Studies department and the enthusiasm of his students for enabling this interdisciplinary research.
In Petro’s own words, receiving recognition from peers makes the years of archival digging and manuscript drafting feel “all the more meaningful.” The accolades from both religious scholars and popular-culture analysts underscore the book’s capacity to bridge traditionally siloed academic fields, offering fresh insights into a pivotal moment of American cultural history.
