How Hysterical reads scenes from the films Light It Up , Three Kings , Remember the Titans , Paris is Burning , Boys Don't Cry , and Magnolia alongside biblical texts from Numbers , Exodus , Isaiah , Micah , Ezekiel and Revelation . An innovation in studies on Bible and film, How Hysterical is less centred on direct citation of the Bible in film than on analyses of hypostasized biblical influence in culture. Here, through accessible engagement with feminist, queer, post-colonial and ideological critical theories, Runions discusses the processes by which biblical and filmic texts can both bolster and disrupt identifications with the norms that drive politics and culture.

Introduction The Return of the Hysterical Phalli: Numbers 16, Light It Up, and Real Life Politics Colonialism's Demand for Excess and Exodus: Three Kings, and the Biblical Conquest Tradition Remember the Titans: Hollywood, Hegel, the Bible, and the Prison Industrial Complex Zion is Burning: 'Gender Fuck' in Micah Why Girls Cry: Gender Melancholia and Sexual Violence in Boys Don't Cry and Ezekiel 16 The Apocalyptic Revelation of Magnolia; E.Runions & A.Gibb

ERIN RUNIONS is a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her work brings together politics, culture and the reading of biblical text, a task which she theorizes extensively in her recent work, Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation, Future in Micah. She is also actively involved in anti-colonial and anti-capitalist organizing.