Brandon Grafius
Matthews Chapel, Matthews Ministry Center, Methodist University

About the Topic

Exploring the themes of his forthcoming book, Concerning Dust and Ashes: Affects of Horror in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford UP, 2025), Brandon Grafius explores the dual affects of the sublime. Dr. Grafius argues that some of the Bible’s sublime encounters resolve into the experience of wonder, but others leave the characters (and the reader) in the position of something akin to Lovecraft’s idea of cosmic horror, in which the world and the universe are understood to be vastly less hospitable to human thriving than was previously assumed. Dr. Grafius will suggest that the Hebrew Bible resorts to horror as a way to move readers towards ideas that are resisted when approached rationally; it is through experiencing the emotion of horror that the boundaries of the universe can be expanded.

About the Speaker

Brandon Grafius is academic dean and associate professor of biblical studies at Ecumenical Theological Seminary, Detroit. His most recent book is Lurking Under the Surface: Horror, Religion, and the Questions that Haunt Us (Broadleaf Books, 2022), and his next monograph is forthcoming in 2025 from Oxford University Press. He is currently co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters (Oxford UP, 2025), and serves as the film area editor for de Gruyter’s Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. He has published widely on the intersection of horror and religion, which articles appearing in publications such as SalonSojournersThe Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Christian Century.

Contact

Virginia Piekarski

Administrative Assistant, College of Arts, Humanities & Sciences
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