The Revealer is an award-winning online magazine that explores religion and its many roles in society and people’s lives. Published ten times a year, The Revealer takes seriously how religion shapes, and is shaped by, race, sexuality, gender, politics, history, and culture. We aim to help the public better understand topics covered elsewhere by pointing a wider lens, providing greater context, and offering more nuanced perspectives. The Revealer features articles from scholars, journalists, and freelance writers. For scholars, writing for The Revealer offers an opportunity to share their expertise with a broad public audience. For journalists and freelance writers, The Revealer is an ideal space to delve deeper than they would be able to in other publications. We publish articles in many forms, including feature essays with original research or on-the-ground reporting, opinion pieces, first person narratives, book/film/television reviews, interviews, and more. The Center for Religion and Media at New York University publishes The Revealer. Brett Krutzsch is the magazine’s Editor and can be reached at editor@therevealer.org.
Editor
- Brett Krutzsch2019-Current holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies and is an expert on LGBTQ history and religion in the United States. Krutzsch is the author of the book Dying to Be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics (Oxford University Press, 2019), a Lambda Literary Award finalist for best LGBTQ nonfiction book of the year. With Nora Rubel, he is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family, coming out from Rutgers University Press in 2024. A recipient of the Virginia Ramey Mollenkott LGBTQ Religious History Award, his writing has appeared in several scholarly journals as well as the Washington Post, Newsday, the Advocate, and the New York Times; he has also been featured on NPR, several podcasts, and radio shows. Pitch him at editor@therevealer.org.
Contributing Editor
- Kali Handelman2019-Current is a freelance editor and writing coach. She has an M.A. in religious studies from Columbia University and a B.A. in cultural and media studies from Eugene Lang, The New School for Liberal Arts. She has designed and led university-level workshops on public writing and taught courses in religious studies and writing about religion. From 2013-2019, Handelman was Editor of The Revealer.
Columnist
- Gillian Frank2024-Current is a historian of religion, sexuality, and race. He is the author of numerous academic articles on the histories of sexuality, gender, and religion (which have appeared in venues like the Journal of the History of Sexuality, American Jewish History, and Gender and History) and public facing scholarship (with bylines in publications including The Washington Post, Time, Jezebel, and Slate). He is co-editor of Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the 20th Century United States (UNC Press, 2018). Frank is currently at work on a manuscript called A Sacred Choice: Liberal Religion and the Struggle for Abortion Before Roe v Wade (forthcoming UNC Press). You can listen to his podcast Sexing History, which explores how the history of sexuality shapes our present, wherever you stream your shows.
Webmaster
- Corey Tegeler2017-Current manages the design and web updates for the Revealer. An accomplished web designer, he builds websites in New York for people and organizations doing non-profit work related to environmental and social justice, public scholarship, education, storytelling, photojournalism, archives, and history.
Past Editors
- Kali Handelman2013-2019 served as Editor of The Revealer from 2013-2019. Handelman is now a freelance editor and writing coach. She is also a Contributing Editor for The Revealer.
- Ann Neumann2010-2013 served as Editor of The Revealer and administrator of the site's publisher, the Center for Religion and Media at NYU, from 2010-2013. She is author of The Good Death: An Exploration of Dying in America (Beacon, 2016) and a contributing nonfiction editor for Guernica magazine. She has written for Harper's magazine, the New York Times, the Baffler, Virginia Quarterly Review, the Guardian, and other publications. Neumann was a visiting scholar at NYU's Center for Religion and Media from 2014 until 2018 and has taught at NYU and Drew University.
- Jeff Sharlet2003-2008 was the Editor of The Revealer from 2003-2008. He is the author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (Harper, 2008), a national bestseller, and What They Wanted a collection of essays (W.W. Norton, 2011) that takes its title from work Sharlet did for The Revealer. He is co-author, with Peter Manseau, of Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible (Free Press, 2004) and co-editor of Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith (Beacon, 2009). In 2010 Sharlet joined the English Department at Dartmouth College.
Co-Directors of the Center for Religion and Media at NYU
- Angela Zito spent three years in Beijing in the early ’80’s, just as the Cultural Revolution was ending, doing historical research on the social and political importance of rituals performed by the emperor. During that time, she worked as dayside editor for The China Daily, China’s English-language newspaper, and then as a “newstaster” for the Reuters’ bureau. Zito received her Ph.D. from University of Chicago and now teaches anthropology and history of Chinese religions at NYU. She is the author of Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in 18th Century China. Since founding the Center for Religion and Media, she has curated independent Chinese documentary screenings in New York and worked in video for a current project on “Writing in water: Of calligraphy, cadres, and ways of performing yourself in public in China.”
- Faye Ginsburg is the David Kriser Professor of Anthropology at NYU, where she is also the founding Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History. Prior to coming to the academy, she worked as documentary producer. Recipient of MacArthur, Guggenheim, and other awards and fellowships, she is the author or editor of four books, including Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community, and most recently the edited collection, Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. She is currently finishing a book entitled Mediating Culture: Indigenous Media in a Digital Age.