Biography
Jin Y. Park is Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy and Religion at American University. She earned her PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Park specializes in East Asian Buddhism, Buddhist-Western comparative thought, philosophy of religion, and Buddhist ethics in the intersection of gender, violence, marginality, and narrative identity. Park has published numerous journal articles and book chapters; her books include Women and Buddhist Philosophy (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017), Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014), Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism (SUNY Press, 2010), and Buddhism and Postmodernity (Lexington Books, 2006).
Park has held a leadership role in the AAR in various capacities. She served on the Government and Leadership Development Committee (2017-2020) and the Hiring, Evaluation, and Promotion Task Force (2019-2020), was a jury for the AAR Research Grants (2016-2019), served on the Board of Directors as an elected at-large member (2013-2015), and was a member of the Program Committee (2013-2015). She also served as co-chair of the Zen Buddhism Seminar (2002-2006) and Korean Religions Unit (2007-2012) and was on the steering committee of the Global Philosophy of Religion (2015-2019), Buddhist Philosophy (2010–2012), and Korean Religions (2002-2006).
Candidate Statement
I am grateful for the nomination for Vice President and the opportunity to serve the American Academy of Religion and its members. I became a member in 1996 as a graduate student, when I presented a paper for the first time at the AAR. Since then, I have participated in the annual meeting every year, without exception, as a paper presenter, commentator, presider, or panel organizer. Participating in the AAR as an individual scholar and as a member of the leadership community, I have learned the importance of the AAR for our scholarly activities and also of its role in our society as a learned community.
Since the first time I joined the leadership at the level of steering committee and co-chair, I have consistently emphasized a fair representation of AAR’s constituency. As the largest organization in the field of religious studies, the AAR has members from different religious traditions, with different career paths, and different visions for religious studies. Fair representation of our constituency in AAR annual meetings and leadership not only reflects the mission of the AAR, it also enriches our scholarship. As a member of the Board of Directors, I saw how seriously the AAR’s leadership took the role of academics and the scholarly community in our society. Serving on the task force, I worked with my colleagues to creatively envision different career paths for scholars of religions in and out of academia, and to provide guidance about them to our members. Through these leadership roles, I learned how to be a bridge between members of different religious traditions and the AAR’s leadership, between members with different career paths and academia, and between the scholarly community of AAR and our society.
We are all individual scholars with different scholarly interests and expertise. But together, we create a scholarly community of religion which believes in the values of religious studies and education. Recent phenomena in American society and around the world testify to the importance of learning about religions, both one’s own and others, to reexamine our values, foster mutual understanding, and better navigate our world. A rapidly globalizing and increasingly technology-driven society needs guidance from the wisdom that various religious traditions have accumulated.
As Vice President of the AAR, I would continue to promote diversity in academia, re-envision the role of religious scholarship and the teaching of religion, and work on how best the AAR can communicate with its diverse constituency to better reflect the rich resources our members represent.
I believe that my long record of service to the AAR, as well as my strong record as a scholar, testifies to my dedication to the field and seriousness as an academic. I believe that now is the time that religious scholarship and scholarly community should visibly demonstrate their role to guide our society, and I would be honored to have an opportunity to make my contribution to that process as Vice President of the AAR.