the below are Ambrose’s explorations in public scholarship, collaboration, and intentional community-making
Now available
at Bloomsbury Publishing and other retailers
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
(Invited by series editors) A Living Archive: Embodying a Black Queer Ethics (London: T&T Clark, 2024).
Co-authored with Benae Beamon, “From James Booker to Big Freedia and Back Again: Black Queer Expression, Agency and Potentiality” in Queering Spirituality and Community in the Deep South, ed. Kamden Strunk (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Inc., 2019).
(Invited by editor) Co-authored with storäe michele, “Queer and Trans Performance and Ritual,” Palgrave Handbook of Queer and Trans Studies in Religion, edited by Melissa M. Wilcox (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
(Invited) “Reading Backwards: The Case of Pauli Murray and a Redacted Queer-Trans Life,” Have Not Our Weary Feet: Essays in Honor of Randall C. Bailey, eds. Ericka Dunbar, Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, Tina Pippin, Kimberly Russaw and Shively Smith. (forthcoming).
(Invited) “‘What’s Magnificent about It and What’s Miserable about It’: Blackqueer Ethics, Community and the Abject Sublime,” The Message Is? (an edited volume on the religious in the art of Arthur Jafa), eds. Jessica Davenport and Nathanael Homewood (forthcoming).
INVITED TALKS AND KEYNOTE LECTURES
(virtual) “Blackqueer Moral Imagination and the Ethics of Sexuality,” The Christian Faith & LGBTQ+ Experience Lectureship, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, NY, April 2022.
Panelist (with writers Hari Ziyad, Donja R. Love, Kleaver Cruz, and storäe michele), “A Stoop Conversation: Writing Black Queer Life Stories,” PEN America's Lit Crawl NYC, Brooklyn, NY, October 2018.
Panelist, “Lost in Lust” with Mike Albo and Ophira Eisenberg, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY, June 2018.
Respondent to James H. Cone lecture on The Cross and the Lynching Tree, “Rethinking Redemptive Suffering from a Womanist Ethical Lens,” Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, GA, February 2013.
SELECTED POPULAR ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS
"Beyond the Gatekeepers with guest Elyse Ambrose, PhD" Show with Bishop Yvette Flunder and Bishop Vanessa Brown, June 2024.
“Elyse Ambrose, A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive,” New Books Network, On Religion with Gregory Soden, April 2024.
“Opening unto Mystery,” Contemplating Now (Podcast), The Christian Century, January 18, 2022.
“Feminism, Religion & Art Mini-Series,” featuring Autumn Brown, Monét Noelle Marshall, Isabel Mareş, and storäe michele, Feminists Talk Religion (Podcast Guest Host), Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc. LAB, 2021.
“Sexual Healing: Finding Holiness in Sexuality,” Tapestry (Podcast), CBC Radio One, October 16, 2020.
“Our Lives: Art as Resistance,” (Panelist), Blaque Political Collective, October 6, 2020.
“How Elyse Ambrose Found Her Queerness Through Her Faith,” HuffPost.com, June 17, 2019.
“Authentic Communal Ethics: Constructing Ethics Rooted in Black Queer Experience,” Religious Institute, Medium.com, June 27, 2018.
“Rethinking Biblical Literalism for Our Own Well-Being,” ForHarriet.com, January 16, 2014.
SELECTED AWARDS, GRANTS, AND FELLOWSHIPS
Engaging Humanities Grant, University of California Humanities Research Institute, 2024-2025.
Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies Fellow, 2024-2025.
Black Religion Scholars Teaching Black Studies at State Universities, Wabash Center Peer-Mentoring Grant Cohort Member, 2024-2025.
Sacred Writes Extended Public Scholarship on Religion Fellowship Program, 2024.
Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars Inductee, Morehouse College, 2023.
Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2020-2022.
Henry Luce Foundation and Center for African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice (Columbia University) Art, Politics and Publics of Black Faith Grant, 2020-2021. with artist, storäe michele.
Robert W. Edgar Dissertation Prize for Social Justice, 2020.
Sarah Pettit Doctoral Fellowship in LGBT Studies, Yale University, 2019.
Forum for Theological Exploration Dissertation Fellowship, 2018-2019.
Louisville Institute Honorary Dissertation Fellowship, 2018-2019.
Auburn Seminary-Cross Currents Research Colloquium Coolidge Fellowship, 2018.
James McClintock Prize for the Outstanding Student Teacher, Drew University, 2016.
RESEARCH
Research Fellow, The Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice, Columbia University, 2017-2018.
Research Assistant, Departments of Social Ethics and African American Studies, Drew University, 2013-2015.
(Archival) Research Assistant, Department of Religion, Spelman College, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, 2012- 2013.
Research Assistant, Office of Black Women in Church & Society, Interdenominational Theological Center, 2012- 2013.
SELECTED ACADEMIC PRESENTATIONS
Co-Panelist, “Blackqueer Possibilities: New Direction in Black Queer Religious Studies,” American Academy of Religion, San Diego, CA, November 2024.
Presenter, “Collage | Assemblage: Sensorial Worlding as Pedagogical Insurgence,” American Academy of Religion, San Diego, CA, November 2024.
Co-Organizer and Co-Facilitator, Insurgencies/Counterinsurgencies: A Conversation on Aesthetics, Archives, and Autonomy with Shellyne Rodriguez and Orisanmi Burton, Center for Ideas and Society, University of California, Riverside, April 2024.
Presenter (invited), “A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics as Liberative Praxis,” Oxford Symposia: Oxford Women’s Leadership Symposium, St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, UK, March 2024.
Panelist, “Beyond: Considerations toward Black Trans Worldmaking,” National Women’s Studies Association, Baltimore, MD, October 2023.
Respondent (invited, virtual), Spirituality and Abolition Panel, Center for Ideas and Society, University of California, Riverside, May 2023.
Co-Host, “Collective Escape: Trans Worldmaking Against Catastrophic Violence” featuring Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Toshio Meronek, and Eric A. Stanley, Center for Ideas and Society, University of California, Riverside, May 2023.
(Virtual) Moderator, “Human Like Me: A Conversation about Queer Black Bodies within Law, Justice, and Equity,” American Humanist Association, Washington, DC, June 2022.
(Invited) “Reading Backward: The Case of Pauli Murray and a Redacted Queer Trans Life,” Panel in honor of Hebrew Bible Scholar, Randall C. Bailey, Society of Biblical Literature, San Antonio, TX, Nov 2021.
[Photography Exhibition and Theoretical Presentation] “Spirit in the Dark Body: Black Queer Expressions of the Immaterial,” American Academy of Religion, San Diego, California, November 2019.
“Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Paradigm of Black Partisan Disentanglement,” American Academy of Religion, San Diego, California, November 2019.
“‘It Is Okay to Save Your Own Life’: Black Queer Femme Counterpublics and Spirituality,” Beyond Bold and Brave Black Lesbian Conference, Barnard College, New York, New York, July 2018.
“Decolonizing the Icon: Román’s Queer Icons and the Deconstruction of Iconoclasm,” Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, New Brunswick, New Jersey, March 2018.
“Practice Spirit, Do Justice ‘Ted Talks’: LGBTQ Scholar-Activists Lead Community Conversations,” Creating Change Conference, National LGBTQ Task Force, Washington, DC, January 2018.
“‘What if I Am a Woman?’: Queering Gender in the Political Speech of Maria W. Stewart,” American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, Texas, November 2016.
“Liberative Ethics at ‘the Pier:’ Environmental Transphobia and the Christopher Street Pier, New York City,” American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, Georgia, November 2015.
“Seeking Welcome, Extending Welcome: Exploring the Struggle for LGBT Inclusion within the United Methodist Church,” Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Indianapolis, Indiana, Nov. 1, 2014.
“Rethinking Redemptive Suffering from a Womanist Ethical Lens,” respondent to James H. Cone, Lecture on The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Atlanta, Georgia, Feb. 20, 2013.