Jin Young Choi
Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Biblical studies, Faculty Member
The global pandemic has underscored the persistence of systemic racism as a structural, institutional, and multidimensional problem. There have been a number of flagrant acts of anti-Black and anti-Asian racism since March 2020, when the... more
The global pandemic has underscored the persistence of systemic racism as
a structural, institutional, and multidimensional problem. There have been
a number of flagrant acts of anti-Black and anti-Asian racism since March
2020, when the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a
global pandemic. The goal of this special issue is to utilize the disciplinary
tools of biblical studies, critical race theory, and Asian American biblical
interpretation to examine the historical, cultural, and biblical roots of the
problem. Our collective work highlights the need for building coalitions
among minoritized scholars and communities to combat the deleterious
effects of systemic racism and White supremacy.
a structural, institutional, and multidimensional problem. There have been
a number of flagrant acts of anti-Black and anti-Asian racism since March
2020, when the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a
global pandemic. The goal of this special issue is to utilize the disciplinary
tools of biblical studies, critical race theory, and Asian American biblical
interpretation to examine the historical, cultural, and biblical roots of the
problem. Our collective work highlights the need for building coalitions
among minoritized scholars and communities to combat the deleterious
effects of systemic racism and White supremacy.
Research Interests:
Despite the fact that 99 percent of us work for a living and although work shapes us to the core, class and labor are topics that are underrepresented in the work of scholars of religion, theology, and the Bible. With this volume, an... more
Despite the fact that 99 percent of us work for a living and although work shapes us to the core, class and labor are topics that are underrepresented in the work of scholars of religion, theology, and the Bible. With this volume, an international group of scholars and activists from nine different countries is bringing issues of religion, class, and labor back into conversation. Historians and theologians investigate how new images of God and the world emerge, and what difference they can make. Biblical critics develop new takes on ancient texts that lead to the reversal of readings that had been seemingly stable, settled, and taken for granted. Activists and organizers identify neglected sources of power and energy returning in new force and point to transformations happening. Asking how labor and religion mutually shape each other and how the agency of working people operates in their lives, the contributors also employ intersectional approaches that engage race, gender, sexuality, and colonialism. This volume presents transdisciplinary, transtextual, transactional, transnational, and transgressive work in progress, much needed in our time.
Research Interests:
Nonwhite women primarily appear as marginalized voices, if at all, in volumes that address constructions of race/ethnicity and early Christian texts. Employing an intersectional approach, the contributors analyze historical, cultural,... more
Nonwhite women primarily appear as marginalized voices, if at all, in volumes that address constructions of race/ethnicity and early Christian texts. Employing an intersectional approach, the contributors analyze historical, cultural, literary, and ideological constructions of racial/ethnic identities, which intersect with gender/sexuality class, religion, slavery, and/or power. Given their small numbers in academic biblical studies, this book represents a critical mass of nonwhite women scholars and offers a critique of dominant knowledge production. Filling a significant epistemological gap, this seminal text provides provocative, innovative, and critical insights into constructions of race/ethnicity in ancient and modern texts and contexts.
Research Interests:
Jin Young Choi rereads discipleship in the Gospel of Mark from a postcolonial feminist perspective, developing an Asian and Asian American hermeneutics of phronesis. Colonized subjects perceive Jesus' body as phantasmic. Discipleship... more
Jin Young Choi rereads discipleship in the Gospel of Mark from a postcolonial feminist perspective, developing an Asian and Asian American hermeneutics of phronesis. Colonized subjects perceive Jesus' body as phantasmic. Discipleship means embodying the mystery of this body while engaging with invisible, placeless and voiceless others.
Research Interests:
This essay delineates how transnational feminist biblical hermeneutics can intervene in the intimate and often unsettling encounter between African American history and subjectivity and those of Asian Americans and promote solidarity... more
This essay delineates how transnational feminist biblical hermeneutics can intervene in the intimate and often unsettling encounter between African American history and subjectivity and those of Asian Americans and promote solidarity between the two and beyond. A feminist intertextual reading of Toni Morrison’s novel Home (2012) parallel to the Gospel of John could facilitate the Asian American community’s transnational and intercultural engagement with African Americans’ traumatic histories. Morrison’s Home tells the story of an African American man named Frank Money who suffered the traumas caused by racism and the Korean War. He returns to a childhood home where he and his sister experience haunting and healing. In John’s Gospel, Jesus becomes a victim of state-sponsored violence by the Roman Empire. After his death, he visits his disciples in Galilee as a ghost in his wounded body. This unhomely home is where remembering and healing can take place. The stories of trauma and healing in the ancient and present times would provide minoritized communities with space for collective restoration amid US imperial domination and racial violence across the globe.
Research Interests:
In contrast to Johannine scholarship's predominant focus on the religious and spiritual as pects of Johannine literature, empire studies examine the Roman presence in John's writ ings or the ways the text negotiates imperial power. These... more
In contrast to Johannine scholarship's predominant focus on the religious and spiritual as pects of Johannine literature, empire studies examine the Roman presence in John's writ ings or the ways the text negotiates imperial power. These studies generally argue that John employs counter-imperial rhetoric to resist the empire or disrupt accommodationist interactions with imperial power. Since identifying John's Gospel as a resistant discourse (e.g., high christology) can reinscribe Christian superiority, postcolonial studies pay more attention to the colonial or imperializing rhetoric in John that creates the hierarchical or der and marginalization of others. Such postcolonial studies examine power relations at work in the text and in their own geopolitical contexts from a resistant, ambivalent, or de colonial position. This essay suggests that empire-critical and postcolonial studies of John's writings engage the material matrix of the text and its cultural production, a nonbinary mode of interpretation focusing on postcolonial texts borne out of liberation strug gles, and intersectional analyses of imperial-(post)colonial formations.
Through the lens of postcolonial melancholia, Choi reads the Gospel of Mark (14:3-9) as a social discourse that embodies memories of oppressed and forgotten people in the Roman Empire. She then theorizes the Asian American experience of... more
Through the lens of postcolonial melancholia, Choi reads the Gospel of Mark (14:3-9)
as a social discourse that embodies memories of oppressed and forgotten people
in the Roman Empire. She then theorizes the Asian American experience of racial,
gendered, and postcolonial melancholia in the processes of immigration, integration,
and racialization. The reader is invited to learn how the anointing woman in Mark
embodies the trauma of war and violence by imperialism, nationalism, and patriarchy.
as a social discourse that embodies memories of oppressed and forgotten people
in the Roman Empire. She then theorizes the Asian American experience of racial,
gendered, and postcolonial melancholia in the processes of immigration, integration,
and racialization. The reader is invited to learn how the anointing woman in Mark
embodies the trauma of war and violence by imperialism, nationalism, and patriarchy.
This essay provides a description of the development of literary criticism in biblical studies. Unlike historical criticism, literary criticism focuses on the text and its literary world rather than the original author, reader, or... more
This essay provides a description of the development of literary criticism in biblical studies. Unlike historical criticism, literary criticism focuses on the text and its literary world rather than the original author, reader, or historical context. It deals with biblical texts primarily as literature, not as historical documents. Choi highlights the shift of focus in the trend, from the actual historical reader to the implied reader to the flesh-and-blood reader. In narrative criticism, for example, the reader is not the real reader actually reading the text, but an ideal or “implied” reader. Primarily a text-oriented method, narrative criticism opened the door for reader-oriented approaches, which emphasize that the meaning of the text depends on the experience of the reader. Reflecting on the development of cultural studies such as feminist, postcolonial, race/ethnicity, gender, and gay/lesbian/queer theories, biblical literary criticism shifted its focus to the flesh-and-blood readers in front of the text. Choi discusses different approaches employed by Asian American biblical scholars in detail, proposes to interpret the biblical text with the theory of literary criticism, particularly of cultural studies, and concludes by proposing creative ways to produce Asian American discourse in biblical literary criticism.
Addressing what constitutes Asian/Asian American interpretation is an arduous task, and perhaps an impossible one because of the heterogeneity of practitioners and the fluidity of contexts. Nonetheless, the collective identity of the... more
Addressing what constitutes Asian/Asian American interpretation is an arduous task, and perhaps an impossible one because of the heterogeneity of practitioners and the fluidity of contexts. Nonetheless, the collective identity of the Asian/Asian American in biblical interpretation has been conceived of as a response to the hegemony or parochialism of Western interpretation. Given the minority position of Asians and Asian Americans in geopolitics and in society, the modifier "Asian/Asian American" signifies the ethnicity of interpreter, the particularity of context, and the partiality of interpretation. Thus, "Asian/Asian American" is not merely a cultural and geographical identifier but also a social and political designator (Foskett and Kuan, 2006, p. xiii). Recognizing that there are many dangers in mapping Asian/Asian American interpretation owing to the political nature of geographical and demographical divisions, this article will begin with brief descriptions of biblical interpretation conducted in different regions of Asia and in the United States. Then it will introduce different approaches to interpretation that demonstrate Asian/Asian American interpretation as it has emerged as a discourse within the discipline of biblical interpretation or biblical studies. Finally, hermeneutical issues in Asian/Asian American interpretation that intersect with gender studies will be addressed.