ERIN RUNIONS, Ph.D.

Department of Religious Studies, Pomona College, 109 Pearsons Hall,
551 North College Avenue, Claremont, CA, 91711
Phone: wk 909.607.0479
email: erin.runions@pomona.edu

 

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

Pomona College, Professor, Department of Religious Studies, 2017-

Pomona College, Chair, Department of Religious Studies, 2013-15, 16-

Pomona College, Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies, 2011-

Pomona College, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, 2005-2011

St. Bonaventure University, Assistant Professor, Department of Theology, 2003-2005    

Barnard College, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Religion, 2002-2003

Barnard College, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Center for Research on Women and Department of Religion, 2000–2002 (Funding Agent: Fonds pour la formation de chercheurs et l’aide à la recherche, Québec)

McGill University, Sessional Lecturer, Faculty of Religious Studies, 1995–2000

Concordia University, Sessional Lecturer, Department of Religion, Winter 1999

 

 

ACADEMIC DEGREES

Ph.D. McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Faculty of Religious Studies, 2001

Thesis: Reading Gender, Nation and Future Vision in Micah: Reconfiguring the Reader as Subject (supervised by Robert Culley).

Bachelor of Music, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1988

 

 

PUBLICATIONS

Books

The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex, and Sovereignty. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.

How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film. Religion/Culture/Critique. New York: Palgrave, 2003

·       excerpt reprinted in The Religion and Film Reader, ed. Brent Plate and Jolyon Mitchell (Routledge, 2007), 378-383.

Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation and Future in Micah. Playing the Texts 7. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.

  

Co-edited Volume

Tat-siong Benny Liew and Erin Runions, eds. Psychoanalytic Mediations between Marxist and Postcolonial Readins of the Bible. Semeia Studies. Atlanta: SBL Press, forthcoming 2016.

 

Black, Fiona, Roland Boer and Erin Runions, eds. The Labour of Reading: Desire, Alienation and Biblical Interpretation. Semeia Studies 36. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999.

             

Articles

Carceral Technologies, Religious Affects, U.S. Theopolitics,” in Bible in Politics, ed. James Crossley and Erin Runions. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2019.

“Immobile Theologies, Carceral Affects: Interest and Debt in Faith-Based Prison Programs.” Affectivity and Divinity: Affect Theories and Theologies, ed. Karen Bray and Stephen A. Moore. New York: Fordham University Press, forthcoming 2018.

“Sexual Politics and Surveillance: A Feminist, Metonymic, Spinozan Reading of Psalm 139.” The Bible and Feminism: Remapping the Field, ed. Yvonne Sherwood. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2017.

“The Bible as Biopolitics in Obergefell v. Hodges: Theopolitical Subtexts and the Economic Management of Democracy.” Political Theology 17.5 (2016): 465-85.

Biobible: Biblical Provocations to Biocapital in the U.S. Culture Wars.” Bible & Critical Theory , 12.2 (2016), http://novaojs.newcastle.edu.au/ojsbct/index.php/bct/issue/view/41

Erin Runions and Tat-siong Benny Liew. “Introduction: Psychoanalytic Mediations,” in Psychoanalytic Mediations between Marxist and Postcolonial Readings of the Bible, ed. Tat-siong Benny Liew and Erin Runions. Semeia Studies. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016.

“The Temptation of Noah: The Debate about Patriarchal Violence in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah.” In The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of Biblical Reception in Film, vol. 2, ed. Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, 827-44.  Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2016.

“The Theopolitics of Panoptic Murk: Scanner Darkly Cites 1 Corinthians.” In Simulating Aichele: Essays in Bible, Film, Culture and Theory, ed. Melissa C. Stewart, 196-210. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015.

Karen Derris and Erin Runions, “More than Global Citizenship: How Religious Studies Expands Participation in Global Communities,” in Teaching Civic Engagement, ed. Forrest Clingerman and Reid B. Locklin. AAR Teaching Religious Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

“Babel and the Fear of Same-Sex Marriage: Mapping Conservative Constellations.” Journal of Biblical Reception 1.1 (2014): 47-65.

“Deconstructing Apocalyptic Literalist Allegory,” in The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. John J. Collins, 235-52. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Son of Man and Resistance to U.S. Imperialism,” in Son of Man, ed. Richard Walsh, Jeffrey L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz, 178-91. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013.

Jane S. Webster, Erin Runions, Eugene V. Gallagher, Davina C. Lopez, Sheila E. McGinn, Todd C. Penner, David B. Howell. Student Learning Outcomes for Biblical Studies in the Liberal Arts.” Teaching Theology & Religion 15 (2012): 262–283.

“Effects of Grace: Detranscendentalizing,” in Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology, ed. Stephen D. Moore, and Mayra Rivera, 225-37. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011.

“Tolerating Babel: The Bible, Film, and the Family in U.S. Biopolitics.”  Religious Studies and Theology 29.2 (2010): 143-69; reprinted in Film and Religion: Four Volumes, ed. Brent Plate. Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies Series. New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2017.

 “Empire’s Allure: Babylon and the Exception to Law in Two Conservative Discourses,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77.3 (2009): 680-711.

Detranscendentalizing Decisionism: Political Theology after Gayatri Spivak,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 25.2 (2009): 67-85.

“Ms. Job and the Problem of God: A Feminist, Existentialist, Materialist Reading.” In From the Margins 1: Women of the Hebrew Bible and their Afterlives, ed. Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg, 159-74. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009.

Queering the Beast: The Antichrists’ Gay Wedding,” in Queering the Non-Human, ed. Noreen Giffney and Myra Hird, 97-110. London: Ashgate, 2008.

“From Disgust to Humor: Rahab’s Queer Affect.” Postscripts: A Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 4.1 (2008), 41-69; reprinted in Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship,  ed. T. Hornsby and K. Stone, 45-74. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2011.

“Signifying Proverbs: Menace II Society.” In Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon, ed. Vincent Wimbush, 145-54. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008.

 Theologico-Political Resonance: Carl Schmitt between the Neocons and the Theonomists.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 18.3 (fall 2007): 43-80.

Inherited Crypts of the Wife/Mother: Ang Lee’s Hulk meets Zechariah 5:5–11 in Contemporary Apocalyptic Discourse,” Biblical Interpretation 14/1–2 (2006): 127-142.

Refusal to Mourn: U.S. National Melancholia and its Prophetic Precursors.” Postscripts: A Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 1.1 (2005): 9-45.

“Desiring War: Apocalypse, Commodity Fetish, and the End of History.” The Bible and Critical Theory 1.1 (2004), http://publications.epress.monash.edu/toc/bc/2004/1/1; reprinted in The Postcolonial Biblical Reader, ed. R. Sugirtharajah, 112-28. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.

Biblical Promise and Threat in U.S. Imperialist Rhetoric, before and after 9.11.” The Scholar and Feminist Online 2.2 (2004), http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/reverb/runions1.htm; reprinted in Interventions: Activists and Academics Respond to Violence, ed. Elizabeth A. Castelli and Janet R. Jakobsen, 71-88. New York: Palgrave, 2004.

“Miracles, Apocalypse, Globalization.” In Talitha Cum!: The Grace of Solidarity in a Globalized World, ed. Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare  and Gabriela Miranda García, 224-35. Geneva: WSCF Publications, 2004.

“Why Girls Cry: Gender Melancholia and Sexual Violence in Boys Don’t Cry and Ezekiel 16.” In Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections Between Scripture and Film, ed. George Aichele and Richard Walsh, 188–212. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International Press, 2002.

  “Violence and the Economy of Desire in Ezekiel 16:1–45.” In A Feminist Companion to Daniel and the Prophets, ed. Athalya Brenner, 156­­­–69. Feminist Companion to the Bible, Second Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.

“Called to Do Justice?: A Bhabhian Reading of Micah 6:8.” In Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible, ed. A.K.M. Adams, 153–65. St. Louis: Chalice, 2001.

“Numbers 16, Two Contemporary Parallels and the Logic of Colonization.” In Culture, Entertainment and the Bible, ed. George Aichele, 182–205. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.

Playing it Again: Utopia, Contradiction, Hybrid Space and the Bright Future in Micah.” In The Labour of Reading: Desire and Alienation in Biblical Interpretation, ed. Fiona Black, Roland Boer, and Erin Runions, 285–300. Semeia Studies 36. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999.     

“Zion is Burning: Gender Fuck in Micah.” Semeia 82 (1998): 225–46.

     

Responses, and Dictionary Articles

“Response to Bible and Critical Theory Special Issue on Erin Runions’s The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex, and Sovereignty.Bible and Critical Theory 11.2 (2015, in progress).

“Political Theologies of the Surveilled Womb?” Political Theology 16.4 (2015): 1-5. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/1462317X15Z.000000000160

Intolerance: Love’s Struggle through the Ages (1916),” in Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films, ed. Adele Reinhartz, 135-39. New York: Routledge, 2012.

“Prophetic Affect and the Promise of Change: A Response.” In Jeremiah (Dis)Placed, ed. Louis Stulman and Peter Diamond, 235-42. New York: T&T Clark, 2011.

Erin Runions and Steven D. Mears. “Babylon in Film.” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Publishing House, 2010.

 “Pop Scripture: Creating Small Spaces for Social Change.” In The Bible In/And Pop Culture, ed. Philip Culbertson and Elaine Wainwright.” Semeia Studies. Atlanta: Scholars, forthcoming, 2010.

Response to Matthew Rindge, ‘Teaching the Bible and Film: Pedagogical Promises, Pitfalls, and Proposals.’” Teaching Theology and Religion 13.2 (2010), 150-51.

Erin Runions and Steven D. Mears. “Babylon in Film.” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Publishing House, forthcoming.

“Poststructuralism, Deconstructionism.” Dictionary of Biblical Criticism and Interpretation.  Ed. Stanley E. Porter and Brook W. R. Pearson. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

“Panopticon Gone Mad? Staged Lives and Academic Discipline(s).” The Recycled Bible: Autobiography, Culture and the Space Between, ed. Fiona Black, 185-194. Semeia Studies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2006.

 

Book Reviews and Review Essays

“Review Essay on Antonio Negri’s The Book of Job.” Bible and Critical Theory 8.1 (2012), http://bibleandcriticaltheory.org/index.php/bct/article/view/484/461.

Review of A Question of Sex? Gender and Difference in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, ed.

Deborah W. Rooke. Biblical Interpretation 18.4-5 (2010): 498-500.

Review of Postcolonial Interventions: Essays in Honor of R. S. Sugirtharajah, ed. Tat-Siong Benny Liew, Journal of Postcolonial Theory and Theology 1 (2010), http://postcolonialjournal.com/Resources/Review%20Postcolonial%20Interventions.pdf

“Religion, Identity and Political Engagment, ” a review essay of Sin, Sex, and Democracy: Antigay Rhetoric and the Christian Right, by Cynthia Burack; Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance, by Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini; AIDS and American Apocalypticism: The Cultural Semiotics of an Epidemic,  by Thomas L. Long; and Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, by Jasbir K. Puar; in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16. 1-2 (2010): 297-307.

“Decentering Authority: The Postcolonial Challenge to Certainty,” a review essay of  Postcolonial Biblical Criticism, ed. Stephen Moore and Fernando Segovia, Journal for the Study of the New Testament  30.4 (2008): 473-79.

Review of Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics: Rethinking Religion through the Arts, by  S. Brent Plate, Bible and Critical Theory 3.1 (2007).

Review of Her Master’s Tools? Feminist and Postcolonial Engagements of Historical Critical Discourse, ed. Caroline Vander Stichele and Todd Penner, Review of Biblical Literature, 2/25 (2006), http://www.bookreviews.org/BookDetail.asp?TitleId=4835.

ARC: Journal for the McGill Faculty of Religious Studies (book review editor), 1997.

Review of The Feminist Companion to the Bible, 10 volumes, ed. Athalya Brenner. ARC 24 (1996): 171–73.

Review of Politics and Theopolitics in the Bible and Postbiblical Literature, ed. Henning G. Reventlow, Yair Hoffman and Benjamin Uffenheimer. ARC 23 (1995): 177–79.

 

Occasional Pieces

Interview with Sonali Kolhatkar on Uprising (KPFK, 90.7), July 7 2014, http://uprisingradio.org/home/2014/07/07/erin-runions-on-the-babylon-complex/

Interview with  Jadaliyya, New Texts Out Now, August 27, 2014, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/19004/new-texts-out-now_erin-runions-the-babylon-complex

Jack Ryan Uses the Bible to Exonerate Wall Street, CIA.” Religion Dispatches, March 1, 2014, http://religiondispatches.org/jack-ryan-uses-bible-to-exonerate-wall-street-cia/

Elizabeth Castelli and Jennifer Knust,  and Erin Runions, “‘It’s Not about a Hurricane. It’s about America’: 2008 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize Winner and Oscar Nominated Trouble the Water to Screen at SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans” SBL Forum, Fall 2009.

 “Torture by the Book: On the Bible and ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.’” The Ecumenist  46.4 (Fall 2009): 16-18.

“Disco-Reggae at Abu Ghraib: Music, the Bible, and Torture.” Religion Dispatches, June 22, 2009, http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/humanrights/1560/disco-reggae_at_abu_ghraib%3A_music%2C_the_bible_and_torture

Homosexualized and Racialized Enemy as Anti/Christ.” Spotlight on Teaching. Religious Studies News 22.4 (October 2007): vi.

 

 

AWARDS AND GRANTS

Pomona College Research Funds

Lilly Endowment , Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion Grants

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Barnard College,

2000–2002. Funding Agent: Fonds pour la formation de chercheurs et l’aide à la recherche, Québec, $30 000/year.

Doctoral Fellowship, McGill University

1995–96. Funding Agent: Fonds pour la formation de chercheurs et l’aide à la recherche, Québec, $15 000/year.

 

 

COURSES

Pomona College, 2005-

·          Introduction to the Hebrew Bible

·          Queer Theory and the Bible

·          Gender and Religion

·          Interpreting Religious Worlds

·          Life, Love, and Suffering, in Biblical Wisdom and the Modern World

·          The Bible Goes to Hollywood: Ideological Afterlives of Scripture

·          Elementary Classical Hebrew (three semester sequence)

·          Prison, Punishment, Redemption (community engagement course)

·          Feminisms in Community (community organizing with a focus on prisons, with community engagement component)

·          Messiahs and the Millennium

·          Gender and Women’s Studies Senior Seminar

·          Religious Studies Senior Seminar

·          Pomona College Academy for Youth Success (PAYS), summer research mentor for underserved local youth

 

St. Bonaventure University 2003-2005

·          Foundational Religious Texts of the Western World

·          Contemporary Biblical Interpretation

·          First Wave Feminism and Religion

·          Women and the Christian Tradition

·          The Intellectual Journey

 

Barnard College, 2002-2003

·       Introduction to the Hebrew Bible

·       Gender and Religion

·       Religion and American Film

·       Millennium: Apocalypse and Utopia

·       Feminist Texts until World War II

 

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES AND SERVICE

Professional Associations:

Ø  American Academy of Religion

Ø  Society of Biblical Literature

Ø  Canadian Society of Biblical Studies

Ø  Cultural Studies Association

Ø  Association for Jewish Studies

 

Editorial Boards:

Ø  Political Theology, 2014-present

Ø  Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 2013-present

Ø  Journal of Biblical Literature, 2013-2015

Ø  Journal of Biblical Reception, 2013-2015

Ø  The Bible and Critical Theory, 2003-present

Ø  Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 2011-2014

Ø  Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, 2007-2014

Ø  Semeia Studies Monograph series, 2005-2010

 

Society of Biblical Literature

Ø  Annual Meeting Program Committee member, 2013-present

Ø  Bible and Cultural Studies Section, Chair 2007 to 2009, Co-Chair 2004-2006, 2009-2012; Steering Committee member, 2002-2003,

Ø  Semiotics and Exegesis Section, Steering Committee Member, 1999-2001

 

Canadian Society for Biblical Studies

Ø  Reading Bible, Gender and Theory Seminar, Co-Chair 1998–2005

 

Ad Hoc Reviewer: 

Ø  Biblical Interpretation

Ø  Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

Ø  National Women’s Studies Association Journal

Ø  Teaching Theology and Religion

Ø  Palgrave Macmillan Press

Ø  Oxford University Press

Ø  Fordham University Press

Ø  Scholar and Feminist Online

 

RECENT PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS

Keynote Address, “Carceral Technologies, Religious Affects, U.S. Theopolitics,” at the Bible in Politics conference, Center for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible, St. Mary’s University Twickenham, London, June 2-3, 2017.

“Faith-based Prison Programs and the Affective Circulation of Interest and Debt,” paper given at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, November 18-22, 2016.

Respondent to session on “Frames of Violence at the Intersections of Ancient and Modern,” Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity section, Society of Biblical Literature, San Antonio, November 18-22, 2016.

Panelist, Review session on Gil Andijar’s Blood: A Critique of Christianity, Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, Calgary Alberta, May 28-30, 2016.

Panelist, Author Meets Critics session on Janet Jakobsen’s forthcoming book, Why Sex, at the American Philosophical Association, San Francisco, April 2, 2016.

Panelist, Author Meets Critic session on Mayra Rivera’s recent book, Poetics of the Flesh, at the American Philosophical Association, San Francisco, April 1, 2016.

“Roundtable of Scholars Doing Academic Work at the Intersections of Sexuality, Gender, Religion, Biblical Studies & Theology.” St. Mary’s College of California, March 31, 2016.

Invited lecture, “Moving from Disgust to Humor in Joshua 2: Rahab’s Queer Affect.” St. Mary’s College of California, March 30, 2016.

Invited paper, “Affective Interest, Carceral Technologies, Theopolitical Subjectivities,  at Affect and Divinity: Affect Theory and Theologies, Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium, Drew University, March 18-20, 2016.

Respondent, Author Meets Critic session on my book The Babylon Complex, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Atlanta GA, November 20-24, 2015.

Panelist, “The State of Political Theology Today,” at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Atlanta GA, November 20-24, 2015.

“In Whose Interest?: Biblical Christianity and the Prison Industrial Complex, ” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta GA, November 20-24, 2015.

Invited lecture, “The Temptation of Noah: The Debate over Violence to Women and to the World in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah” the University of Auckland, September 14, 2015; University of Alberta, Edmonton, October 15, 2015; University of Lethbridge, October 28, 2015.

Invited lecture, “Biblicized Biopolitics and U.S. Theopolitics: Religion, Bodies, Democracy, Economy,” University of Alberta, Edmonton, October 15, 2015.

Invited lecture, “Biblicized Biopolitics and the Babylon Complex,” Columbia University, Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, New York,  October 1, 2015.

“The Biopolitical Bible: Conservative Christianity, Capitalized Bodies, and the Subject of Interest in the U.S,  paper presented at the Radicalism, Violence, and Religious Texts Colloquium, University of Auckland, September 11, 2015. 

“More than Global Citizenship: How Religious Studies Expands Participation in Global Communities,” paper presented at the annual conference of the Cultural Studies Association, Riverside, May 22, 2015.

“Surveillance, Threat, Scripture: Psalm 139 and the Affective Shaping of Political Subjectivity,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, Ottawa, May 30-June1, 2015.

“Psalm 139 and Affect,” paper presented at the annual conference of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Diego, November 21-14, 2014.

“‘Sick Democracy’ and the Subject of Interest,” paper presented at Love in the Time of Capital, Yale University, May 8-9, 2014.

Panelist on the “War on Women” panel at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Baltimore, November 23-26, 2013.

“The Bible as Ideological Affect: What These Words Can Do to You,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Baltimore, November 23-26, 2013.

“Some Questions about the Intersection of Queer Theory and Religion,” paper prepared for the conference At the Intersection of Queer Studies and Religion, Barnard College, November 20-21, 2013.

“Babel and the Fear of Same-Sex Marriage: Mapping Conservative Constellations,” paper presented at the inaugural conference for the international Journal of Biblical Reception, Princeton University, February 11-13, 2013.

Respondent to Peterson Toscano’s Transfigurations. At the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Chicago, November 17-20, 2012.

Son of Man and U.S. Imperialism.”  Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Chicago, November 17-20, 2012.

Panelist for a panel review of Burton Mack’s Myth and the Christian Nation and Christian Mentality (London: Equinox, 2008 and 2011).

“From Babel to Biopolitics: Josephus, Theodemocracy, and the Regulation of the Family.” Paper presented at the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Amsterdam, July 22-26.

Panelist for panel review of Antonio Negri’s The Labor of Job (Duke University Press, 2009). Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Francisco, November 19-22, 2011.

“Revenge on the Whore: Literalist Allegory and the Violence of. Scripturalization.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Francisco, November 19-22, 2011.

“Babel, Filiation, and the Dea(r)th of Democracy.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, Fredericton, NB, May 29-31, 2011.

 “Tolerating Babel: The Bible, Film, and the Family in U.S. Biopolitics.”  Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, November 20-23, 2010.

“Torture by the Book: Psalm 137 after Abu Ghraib.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, November 20-23, 2010.

“Torture by the Book: Psalm 137 after Abu Ghraib.” Paper presented at the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, Montreal, Quebec, May 29-31, 2010.

“By the Book: Biblical Allegory and Torture.” Paper presented at the Radcliffe Institute Exploratory Seminar on Christianity and Torture, Harvard University, June 6-9, 2010.

“From Disgust to Humor: Rahab’s Queer Affect.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, November 21-24, 2009.

Panelist for on a review panel of  Postcolonial Interventions: Essays in Honor of R. S. Sugirtharajah at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, November 21-24, 2009.

Panelist for a session entitled “Student Learning Outcomes in the Liberal Arts,” at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, November 21-24, 2009.

Cofacilitated part of a workshop, “Pedagogies for Civic Engagement,” at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in Montreal, November 9-10, 2009.

Respondent to Stephen Moore’s paper “Metonymies of Empire: Sexual Humiliation and Gender Masquerade in the Book of Revelation” in the Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Homosexualities, fromAntiquity to the Present” at UCLA, Thursday Oct. 15, 2009.

“From Disgust to Humor: Nonheteronormative Racialization and the Transvaluation of Affect in Joshua 2.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, Ottawa, Ont., May 24-26, 2009.

“Regularizing Sexuality in the Biopolitical: Babylon as Political Symbol in U.S. Culture.” Guest lecture for the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Florida, March 26, 2009.

“From Disgust to Humor: Nonheteronormative Racialization and the Transvaluation of Affect in Joshua 2.” Paper given to the Feminist Studies in Religion group at the University of Chicago Divinity School on February 12, 2009.

“Regulating the Polis(sexual): Babylon as Political Symbol in U.S. Culture.” Lecture for Ropes Lecture Series, hosted by the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati on February 10-11, 2009.

“Feminist Biblical Studies: Interrogating Empires in Diverse Contexts.” Panel discussant, at the annual meeting of the the Society of Biblical Literature, Boston, November 22-25, 2008.

Respondent to session: Utopia, Hope and the Fantasy of Violence in Jeremiah, at the annual meeting of the the Society of Biblical Literature, Boston, November 22-25, 2008.

“Empire’s Allure: Babylon, Conservative Discourse, and the State of Exception.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, Vancouver, B.C., June 1-3, 2008.

Panelist for the differences volume “God and Country,” at the annual meeting of the Cultural Studies Association, New York, NY, May 22-24, 2008.

“The Anti-Christs Get Married: Heteronormativity and the Human.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association.” Long Beach, CA, April 24-27, 2008 (invited).

“Theologico-Political Resonance: Carl Schmitt between the Neocons and the Theonomists.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. San Diego, Nov. 16-19, 2007.

“‘Effects of Grace’: Detranscendentalizing.” Paper presented at the Drew Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium VII. Planetary Loves: Postcoloniality, Gender, and Theology. Drew University, Nov. 1-4, 2007 (invited).

“Illuminations.” Panel discussant at the Boston Court Theater presentation of Gilgamesh, Pasadena, March 29, 2007 (invited).

“Ms. Job and the Problem of God.” Paper presented at the conference “Little Women: Lesser Known Characters from the Hebrew Bible,” convened by the Luce Program for Scripture and Literary Arts, Boston University, March 11-13, 2007 (invited).

Respondent for panel on How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film (Runions, Palgrave, 2003). Paper presented at the annual general meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Washington, D.C., November 18-21, 2006 (invited).