Asian and Asian American Women in Theology and Religion

This book presents personal narratives and collective ethnography of the emergence and development of Asian and Asian American women’s scholarship in theology and religious studies. It demonstrates how the authors’ religious scholarship is based on an embodied epistemology influenced by their social locations. Contributors reflect on their understanding of their identity and how this changed over time, the contribution of Asian and Asian American women to the scholarship work that they do, and their hopes for the future of their fields of study. The volume is multireligious and intergenerational, and is divided into four parts: identities and intellectual journeys, expanding knowledge, integrating knowledge and practice, and dialogue across generations.

“So gracefully shared embodied knowledge and wisdom of the authors in this book, it satisfies the thirst for inspiration, encouragement, solidarity, affirmation, and sisterhood. As this book testifies, we are all evolving and improvising what it means to live in the first-world context in the twenty-first century.”
–Jung Ha Kim, Georgia State University, USA

 “The essays in Asian and Asian American Women in Theology and Religion: Embodying Knowledge are compelling in their erudition, range, courage, and collective power. Together, they articulate and illustrate the vital role and significance of embodied experience and knowledge in shaping the intellectual, spiritual, and engaged work of Asian and Asian American women. Written by scholars, activists, and public intellectuals working across a variety of contexts, the essays shimmer with the truth of embodied knowledge that has been forged at the nexus of theory, social location, and lived experience, with sustained attention to communities of accountability.”

–Mary Foskett, Wake Forest University, USA

“Reading this work is truly an exhilarating experience! This is how scholarship in religion and theology should be done in the 21^st century: rooted in tradition while firmly engaged in urgent present-day realities, interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and maintaining a good balance between theory and praxis while utilizing traditional and cutting-edge styles of analysis. The voices of this vibrant network of Asian and Asian North American women-scholars (lamentably not often showcased in academia) deserves to be known and read not only by the Asian and Asian North American communities but in the wider world of the academy and the church!”
–Julius-Kei Kato, King’s University College at Western University, Canada

Kwok Pui-lan is William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and spirituality, emerita, at Episcopal Divinity School and a past president of the American Academy of Religion. An internationally known theologian, she is the author of Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology and Discovering the Bible in the Non-Biblical World.