Luis Menéndez-Antuña

Luis Menéndez-Antuña is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Boston University School of Theology. He is interested in liberation theologies, cultural studies, and critical theory. Previously, he was Assistant Professor at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and served as Core Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley, CA). His current research explores the queer and postcolonial afterlives of the biblical texts. He has published his research on journals such as Estudios Eclesiásticos, Ilu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones, Biblical Interpretation, Journal of Religious Ethics, Early Christianity, Critical Research on Religion, Journal of Biblical Literature, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. His first monograph on Revelation, Thinking Sex with the Great Whore: Deviant Sexualities and Empire in the Book of Revelation (Routledge) offers a liberatory reading of Revelation 17-18 using postcolonial and queer historiographies to explore emancipatory paths for identity formation in Biblical texts. He is currently working on his second monograph (New Testament Studies after the Cultural Studies Turn) that focuses on theoretical and hermeneutical developments in New Testament Studies.

Previously to completing his doctoral studies at Vanderbilt University, Menéndez-Antuña received a Master in Biblical Studies from the Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Madrid), and a Master of Theology from the Universidad Pontificia in Salamanca. He is a Fulbright scholar and has also received grants from the Hispanic Theological Initiative/Luce Foundation, the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, and the Louisville Institute. He received the Diamond Award for integrative scholarship (SBL, 2021) for his work on torture in the Gospel of Mark.

Menéndez-Antuña also brings twelve years of activism and ministry experience. He has worked in community organizing, HIV advocacy, homeless shelters, prison, and with kids on the street. His political and theological commitments spring from his involvement in Catholic Christian Base Communities rooted in Latin-American Liberation Theology.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Monographs

Thinking Sex with the Great Whore: Deviant Sexualities and Empire in the Book of Revelation (London/New York: Routledge, 2018). 

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“The Unthought Body of the Enslaved: Early Christianity and the Flesh,” in Andrea Jain (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Body (Oxford: Oxford University Press, expected 2023).

“The Book of Torture. The Gospel of Mark, Crucifixion, and Trauma,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 90.2 (2022): 377–395.

“Of Social Death and Solitary Confinement: The Political Life of a Gerasene (Luke 8:26–39)” Journal of Biblical Literature 138.3 (2019): 643–664.

“Black Lives Matter and Gospel Hermeneutics: Political Life and Social Death in the Gospel of Luke,” Currents in Theology and Mission 45.4 (October 2018): 29–34.

“Is Caravaggio a Queer Theologian? Paul’s Conversion on the Way to Damascus,” Critical Research on Religion 6.2 (2018): 132–150.

“The Queer Art of Biblical Reading. Matthew 25:31-46 (Caritas Christiana) through Caritas Romana,” Journal of Religious Ethics 45.4 (2017): 732–759.

“Cuerpos ambiguos. Un estudio comparativo del status antropológico y político de las mujeres en las Cartas Pastorales y los Hechos Apócrifos de Pablo y Tecla,” Ilu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones 21 (2016): 93–113.

“Is There a Room for Queer Desires in the House of Biblical Scholarship? A Methodological Reflection on Queer Desires in the Context of Contemporary New Testament Studies,” Biblical Interpretation 23 (2015): 399–427.

“Male-Bonding, Female Vanishing. Representing Gendered Authority in Luke 23:26-24:53,” Early Christianity 4 (2013): 490–506.

“Relecturas desde el ‘más-acá’. Introduciendo la óptica postcolonial en el panorama bíblico de lengua hispana,” Theologica Xaveriana 61.171 (2011): 169–202.

“Status desviado: mujeres estigmatizadas en el cristianismo primitivo,” Estudios Eclesiásticos 322 (2007): 571–610.

Other Publications

In Edited Volumes

“Bible and Sexuality Studies,” in Fernando Segovia and Ahida Pilarski (eds.) Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Latin and Latinx America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2024).

“Whiteness and the Dismissal of Emancipatory Hermeneutics in Biblical Studies: A Decolonial Genealogy,” in Wongi Park (ed.) Multiracial Biblical Criticism (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, forthcoming 2023).

“The Task of the Cultural Biblical Critic: Constructing the Text,” in Francisco Lozada, Amy L. Allen, and Yak-Hwee Tan (eds.) The Critic in the World: Biblical Criticism and Glocal Realities (Atlanta: SBL Press, forthcoming 2023).

“The Colonies Strike Back,” in Jin Young Choi and Gregory Cuéllar (eds.) Activist Hermeneutics of Liberation in the Bible (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2023).

“The Ethical Turn in Biblical Studies: Its Relevance for the Classroom as an Interreligious Space,” in Lucinda Allen Mosher, Mary Elizabeth Moore, Or N. Rose, Axel Takács, (eds.) Deep Understanding for Divisive Times: Essays Marking a Decade of the Journal of Interreligious Studies (Newton Centre: Interreligious Studies Press, 2020), 114–119.

“La ambigüedad poscolonial: lecturas ambivalentes del evangelio de Marcos,” in Carlos Gil (ed.) El Evangelio de Marcos. Reseña Bíblica 85 (Primavera 2015), 25–38.

“1 Corinthians,” in Mark Roncace and Joseph Weaver (eds.) Global Perspectives on the New Testament (New Jersey: Pearson, 2014), 148–150.

“Pastoral Epistles,” in Mark Roncace and Joseph Weaver (eds.) Global Perspectives on the New Testament (New Jersey: Pearson, 2014), 185–187.

“What Queer Hermeneutics Can Do for Us in Spain,” in Yung Suk Kim (ed.) 1 and 2 Corinthians. Texts@Contexts (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013), 147–162.

Other Venues

“A Coming Out Story,” in BU Today. Coming Out Series (June, 2022).

https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/my-coming-out-story-luis-menendez-antuna/

“Against Opposition,” in Against Us, Within Us (Mild Laohapoonrungsee). Project on Queer Life in Boston (https://againstus-withinus.myportfolio.com/home).

“Mark 10:2-16. Commentary,” “Mark 10:17-31. Commentary,” “Mark 10:35-45. Commentary,” Mark 10:46-52. Commentary,” in WorkingPreacher.org (2021-2022).

See https://www.workingpreacher.org/authors/luis-menendez-antuna

“What biblical scholars don’t do” in Living Lutheran (December 2018).

“Academic talk is not racial justice” in Daily Theology.com (28-10-2017).

See https://dailytheology.org/2017/10/28/academic-talk-is-not-racial-justice/

“San Juan 11:1-45. Comentario,” “San Mateo 27:11-54. Comentario,” “San Juan 13:1-17, 31b-35. Comentario,” “San Juan 18:1-19:42. Comentario,” “San Marcos 5:21-43. Comentario,” “San Juan 3:1-17. Comentario,” “San Marcos 3:20-35. Comentario,” “San Juan 15:26-27, 16:4b-15. Comentario,” in WorkingPreacher.Org (2016-2017).

See https://www.workingpreacher.org/authors/luis-menendez-antuna

“John 15: 1-11” and “John 15: 12-17,” in Cynthia A. Jarvis and Elizabeth Johnson (eds.) Feasting on the Gospels. John, Volume 2 (Louisville: KY, Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), 181-182.

“Por donde pasa este torrente.  Experiencias de Dios en la vida cotidiana”, Todos a uno 164 (2005).

“El Reino de Dios”, in Miguel Iribertegui (Ed.), El Rosario de María (San Esteban: Salamanca, 2003), 55–63.