Courtney Ann Irby is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Illinois Wesleyan University. She is a scholar of gender, relationships, and religion, with a focus on how religious individuals and their communities have navigated cultural shifts in dating and marriage.

Her recent book, Guiding God's Marriage, with New York University Press draws upon a comparative study of evangelical Protestant and Catholic marriage preparation programs to discuss how Christians have used therapeutic practices as a space to religiously make sense of the meaning of marriage. She has also published an article in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography that examines evangelical leaders’ discourses on sex and their lessons for how engaged couples should manage sexual shame during the transition to marriage. Most recently, a chapter in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion, Gender, and Sexuality compares Christian premarital counseling with reentry programs to illuminate how gender shapes these therapeutic interventions. A forthcoming publication in Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning showcases how premarital counseling operates as a form of financial socialization.

She explores some of these themes in her courses, such as Emotions & Society, Sex and Gender, Marriage and Families, Sociology of Sexualities, and Hanging Out and Hooking Up. Additionally, she regularly offers courses to teach and guide student research, including Methods of Social Research, Advanced Sociological Research, and a May Term course on Field Research Experience.