Erin Runions is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Pomona College. Her research focuses on the Hebrew Bible and its reception history, with special attention to the influence of Christian interpretation on contemporary culture and politics. She explores how historical accumulations of biblical interpretation, belief, structures of thought, and affects come to influence systems of control: empire-building, state violence, biopolitics, family values, sexual regulation, biocapital, and the prison industrial complex. Her publications include, The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex, and Sovereignty (Fordham University Press, 2014); How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film (Palgrave MacMillan, 2003); Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation, Future in Micah (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001); as well as articles in a range of edited collections and journals including, Journal of the American Academy of Religion; Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion; differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies; Postscripts: A Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds; GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies: Biblical Interpretation; The Bible and Critical Theory; and Semeia.
Erin has also been an activist for many years, working on issues of police brutality and prison injustice, globalization, antiwar activism, feminist and queer organizing. She currently helps facilitate a writing workshop inside a women’s prison and is involved in the struggle for environmental justice in the city of Pomona.