About Dr. Henriksen

Expertise & Interests

LGBTQ studies, queer and trans anthropology, critical ethnography, African studies, medical humanities, visual culture, crip theory & disability studies, religious studies

Research

I am interested in how queer and trans people navigate embodied cultural norms, including in medical spaces, through artistic creation, and in religious arenas. My research combines critical ethnography with queer and trans theory, African studies, medical humanities, visual culture, crip theory, and religious studies.

My research centers around queer and trans populations in the U.S. and in Rwanda. Funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship, my first project examined Southern Baptist beliefs and authoritarian politics in post-genocide Rwanda. Examining transnational power dynamics of hierarchies and marginalization, I used participant observation and semi-structured interviews to focus on queer experiences under an authoritarian government and gender dynamics embedded in a religious-political partnership between American pastor Rick Warren and Rwandan President Paul Kagame. 

My current project investigates the interplay between form and content in trans artistic work to uncover what these pieces might be able to tell us about contemporary trans lives in the U.S. Through ethnographic research methods, visual inquiry, and archival research, this project investigates how trans artists wield embodied and material resistance against systemic restrictions. Centering trans experiences accessing and receiving gender-related healthcare, I examine the materiality of responses to such care—from painting and photography to durational performance work.

I am also involved in the ongoing teaching of medical professionals and other community members. I am an affiliated faculty member at the Institute for Health Equity and Community Justice at Rhodes College through which I have lectured on LGBTQ health equity at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Rhodes College, and Changent, a national organization dedicated to supporting first-time parents through nurse home visitation. Annually, I direct a day-long workshops at Rhodes College for medical residents from Baptist Memorial Hospital on how to best serve LGBTQ patients. Finally, I recently taught a community-focused course on theorizing transness at Rhodes’ Meeman Center for Lifelong Learning.

Selected Publications

Henriksen, Beck A. 2026. “The Production of PEACE: Neoliberal Identities & PEACE History in
Contemporary Rwanda.” American Examples: New Conversations about Religion 6.

Henriksen, Beck A. 2025. “The Body in African Evangelicalism: Scholarship and New Directions in
Gender, Sexuality, and Disability Studies.” Religion Compass 19, no. 8: e70026.
https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.70026.

Mozhui, Khyobeni, Beck A. Henriksen, Lauren A. Bell, Ingrid Bretherton, Ada S. Cheung, and
Boris Novakovic. 2025. “Tracking Epigenetic Biomarkers of Health and Aging During the
Initial Year of Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy.” The Yale Journal of Biology and
Medicine 98, no. 2: 105.

Henriksen, Beck A. 2009. “He, Him, Himself: A Critical Examination of the Exclusively Masculine
Language in Karl Barth’s The Epistle to the Romans.” Glossolalia 2, no. 1.

Henriksen, Beck A. 2009. “Shifting Encounters: An Exploration of Bill Viola’s Study for Emergence.”
Glossolalia 1, no. 1.

Courses

• ANTH 3282: American Communities
• ANTH 4065: Anthropological Theory
• ANTH 4416/6414: Culture, Identity and Power