Reading with Feeling: Affect Theory and the Bible

The psychological approach known as affect theory focuses on bodily feelings--depression, happiness, disgust, love--and can illuminate both texts and their interpretations. In this collection of essays scholars break new ground in biblical interpretation by deploying a range of affect-theoretical approaches in their interpretations of texts. Contributors direct their attention to the political, social, and cultural formation of emotion and other precognitive forces as a corrective to more traditional historical-critical methods and postmodern approaches, and response essays push the conversations into profitable directions for future research.