Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
My grandmother, my last living grandparent, recently died. She was 84 years old. Because I’ve just come back from Taiwan where I participated in all of her funerary rites and delivered a eulogy therein, I’ve been thinking a lot about memorializing the dead. Is there such a thing as a “feminist” or feminist Christian way to remember the dead? What, if any, are the components of a feminist eulogy?
Last week, social media was ablaze over a September 18 Pittsburg Post-Gazette column entitled “Death of An Adjunct” by Daniel Kovalik that had the following teaser: “Margaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor of French for 25 years, died underpaid and underappreciated at age 83.” Inside Higher Ed reports that the column went viral as “adjuncts across the country reported seeing something tragically familiar in her story.” The Chronicle of Higher Education likewise covered the story with this tagline: “An Adjunct’s Death Becomes a Rallying Cry for Many In Academe.”
This tragedy involves all sorts of issues with which readers of this blog are concerned: power, structural injustice, job insecurity, underemployment, unions, healthcare, and Catholic values (the last of these since Margaret worked at a Catholic institution), to name a few.
Continue reading “No More Of This in Academe! by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”
I’m officially in “back to school” mode, as I put the finishing touches on my syllabi, get my course websites ready, and prepare my 5-year old son for Kindergarten.
As I think about new graduate students studying theology or ministry, I’m reminded that while women make-up approximately 1/3 of all seminary students nationwide, at the place at which I work (Claremont School of Theology), they comprise half of the student body.
In honor of all the new, especially female, matriculates (at my school or elsewhere), I’m reposting below one of my first entries on this blogsite. It was entitled “Undermining Our Own Authority.” The advice I gave then still captures what I’d say now.
Continue reading “Some Friendly Advice for Female Graduate Students by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”
As I write this blog, I am nearing the end of my week-long family vacation in Palm Desert. While we’ve had lots of fun splashing around in the pool, everywhere I turn I am bombarded by scenes and memories of violence.
Continue reading “Everywhere I am surrounded by tales of violence by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”
I have the privilege of serving as Co-director of the Center for Sexuality, Gender, and Religion at Claremont School of Theology. I am ecstatic that we just hosted our version of a “rainbow graduation” at this year’s Commencement.
Continue reading “It Was a Rainbow Graduation by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”
“I hope that readers will rethink their consumer choices, monies that have long been offered at the expense of nonhuman animals–overwhelmingly female and exploited because of their female biology. We choose where our money goes, and in the process, we choose whether to boycott cruelty and support change, or melt ambiguously back into the masses.”
Continue reading “Speaking Up for Animals by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”
On Sunday, February 10, the Tet parade in Little Saigon, Westminster (CA) went on as planned. Several thousand people turned up to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year, or what Khanh Ho, Assistant Professor of English at Grinnell College, has likened to “Mardi Gras, New Years, and Christmas all rolled into one.”
Continue reading “Ringing In the Lunar New Year with LGBT Activism By Grace Yia-Hei Kao”
The annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics is just around the corner (Jan 3-6, 2013). One of my responsibilities will be to meet again with members of the 2020 Future of Christian Ethics task force.
Our “charge” according to the chair of the committee, Charles Matthewes, is as follows:
Continue reading “The Future of Christian Ethics by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”
This weekend is the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR).
I’ll be giving a presentation in a panel that I organized in one session and serving as the invited respondent in another. I’ll also be spending approximately one-third of my total conference time interviewing candidates with my colleagues for a faculty position at my institution.
This is all to say that I’ll be attending the AAR with a modicum of status and power.
Continue reading “Status and Power at the AAR by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”
Feminism and Religion 