Bartlett Lecture: Haruka Umetsu Cho, Stephanie Wong, and Peng Yin, “Understanding the Divine from an East Asian Perspective”

Event time: 
Monday, March 6, 2023 - 5:30pm to 6:30pm
Location: 
Sterling Divinity Quadrangle (SDQ ), Niebuhr Hall See map
409 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

A panel of three distinguished alum scholars—Haruka Umetsu Cho ’15 M.Div., Stephanie Wong ’13 M.Div., and Peng Yin ’12 M.A.R.—will present this year’s Bartlett Lecture on Monday, March 6, at Yale Divinity School.
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Chloë Starr, Professor of Asian Christianity and Theology, will moderate the event, titled “Understanding the Divine from an East Asian Perspective.”
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Scheduled for 5:30 p.m. in Niebuhr Hall, the event is part of the YDS Bicentennial observance taking place this year and showcases three exceptional scholars who are shaping debates on Chinese and Japanese Christianity in new ways at the intersection of theology, philosophy, literature, history, and ethics. Each will present a short research paper giving an insight into their work and approach, followed by a response from Chloë Starr and audience Q&A.
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Event to be broadcast on Livestream. Watch here: https://livestream.com/yaledivinityschool/events/10766079.
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Dr. Haruka Umetsu Cho is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. Her research interests span Christian theology, East Asian literature, feminist/queer theories, and postcolonial studies. She is currently working on her first book, a theological reading of modern Japanese fiction and poetry between the late 1860s and 1930s. The book focuses on themes of the Divine, eros, and women’s flesh and analyzes how, in the context of Western colonialism and modernism, those themes were transmitted, adapted, and reinterpreted by Japanese writers.
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Dr. Stephanie Wong is Assistant Professor of Global Religions at Villanova University. She focuses her scholarship on the development of Catholic theology in China and on comparative theology, with particular interest in the interplay between Christianity and the Chinese religio-philosophical traditions Confucianism, Daoism, and Mahayana Buddhism. She is under contract with Oxford University Press for a book titled National Witness: Chinese Catholicism After the Age of Empires. Also, she is the contributor of a chapter in the upcoming volume Modern Chinese Theologies I: Mainland and Mainstream, edited by Chloë Starr.
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Dr. Peng Yin is Assistant Professor of Ethics at the Boston University School of Theology. Dr. Yin has published scholarly articles in Modern Theology and Journal of Religious Ethics and is completing a manuscript on the intelligibility of moral language across metaphysical differences. He has received the Emerging Scholar Fellowship from Villanova University’s Center for Political Theology and the Doctoral Fellowship from The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History. Prior to Boston University, he taught at Candler School of Theology at Emory University as a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellow.
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Dr. Chloë Starr is a leading scholar of Asian Christianity, with a particular focus on China. Her book Chinese Theology (2016) is a study of Chinese theological texts and their ties to literary forms. She has recently published a Reader In Chinese Theology (2022) and is currently editing a three-volume set, Modern Chinese Theologies. Earlier works include Red-light Novels of the Late Qing (2007); a coedited volume, The Quest for Gentility in China (2007); and an edited volume, Reading Christian Scriptures in China (2008).
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The Bartlett Lectureship was created in 1986 with a gift from the Rev. Robert M. Bartlett ’24 B.D. and his wife, Sue Bartlett. The lectureship serves a twofold purpose. The first is to foster knowledge and appreciation of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony and their contribution to the religious, intellectual, and political life of America. The second is to encourage understanding of the history and culture of modern China. These two areas are treated on a rotating basis. In 1992 the Bartletts added to their gift and broadened the scope to include “Democracy, Human Rights, and World Peace.”

Open to: 
General Public

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