Hello! I am the Maude Sharpe Powell Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University in North Carolina.
I’m originally from Portland, Oregon, but relocated to the South for seminary and graduate school (both at Emory in Atlanta). I have been at Elon University in North Carolina since 2004.
My teaching focuses on the writings of the New Testament and Early Christianity, exploring these traditions within the context of Second Temple Judaism and the first-century Roman Empire and how they shape the worlds and experiences of later readers. Among the classes I offer are “Early Christian Literature in Context,” “Satan and the Supernatural,” “Apocalyptic Now and Then,” and “Sex Lives of Saints.” I have also had the opportunity to teach more broadly in Religious Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, with courses such as “Approaches to the Study of Religion,” “Christian Traditions,” “Queer Christianities,” and “Current Controversies in Feminism.” I also regularly teach courses abroad, including courses in Italy and Turkey, and in congregational settings.
I am an active scholar and my writing focuses on the Book of Revelation. Utilizing methodological tools such as rhetorical criticism, conceptual metaphor theory, historical analysis, and feminist criticism, I explore the ways Revelation’s gendered images emerge in conversation with the text’s socio-historical contexts. My work regularly attends to the way Revelation engages the built environment and material cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world. Interested in the ways Revelation shapes how its audiences think and see, I examine how the text’s images are redeployed by later interpreters, including medieval women mystics, visionary artists from the Southeastern US, and contemporary queer interpreters. I am especially interested in visual representations of biblical texts and I have written about using visual art to teach the Bible, as well as the way Keith Haring and William S. Burroughs work with the text’s imagery in their 1988 collaboration Apocalypse. Currently, I am completing a feminist commentary on Revelation for the Liturgical Press Wisdom Commentary Series.
On a more personal level, my spouse and I divide our time between North Carolina, Oregon, and Kansas City, MO, where she has a tax preparation business that caters to Spanish-speaking clientele. We have two small dogs, who go everywhere with us. I enjoy traveling, camping, bird-watching, and making art.
Lynn R. Huber 