Assistant Professor in VCU’s Religious Studies Department, School of World Studies,  Kristin Swenson majored in biology and religion at St. Olaf College, earned a Masters of Theological Studies at Boston University with a specialization in Biblical Studies, and did her Ph.D. work in Boston University's "History and Literature of Ancient Israel" program. Dr. Swenson’s research explores how biblical interpretation shapes contemporary thinking about matters such as health, social relationships, and the environment. She is especially interested in the relationship of spirit and body, in the broadest sense of those terms, and in the power of stories – a theme explored in her monograph Living through Pain: Psalms and the Search for Wholeness (Baylor University Press, 2005). Together with Esther R. Nelson, she wrote “What is Religious Studies: A Journey of Inquiry” to introduce the academic study of religion in a manner both playful and substantive. Dr. Swenson has begun work on a new book concerning religion and food, tentatively titled “Feasting, Fasting, and Just Eating: Essays on Spirituality and Food”. She teaches courses in Bible, including Introduction to the Old Testament, Introduction to the New Testament, Bible as Literature, and Genesis and the Abrahamic Traditions, Biblical Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible), and Religion and Nature.

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