Third Space focuses not only on Asian American history and ministry but it also has an academic side focusing on Asian American theology and biblical studies. Check out this page for our latest research and activities in the academic world.

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Call for Papers

Our IBR Asian American Biblical Interpretation Research Group will be meeting in San Antonio this year (November 2023). The program will be a Call for Papers as below.
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Theme: Family, Kinship, and Community
This year our research group is issuing an open call for papers on the subject of “Family, Kinship, and Community.” We are seeking paper proposals that will explore this broad theme from the perspective of an Asian American biblical interpreter. For example, it is well-known that Asian and Asian American worldviews display a distinctively collectivist understanding of self vis-à-vis western individualism. The notion of “family” is also multi-generational and often hierarchical. Papers should be rooted in the biblical text emerging from either the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible or New Testament. Two invited papers will also be part of the program this year. Paper proposals (approx. 450-500 words) can be made to either Milton Eng (miltoneng@thirdspaceaa.org) or Max Lee (mlee1@northpark.edu) by …………….

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IBR Research Group
Asian American Biblical Interpretation: Evangelical Voices
2022 Update

Left to right: Max Lee, Soong-Chan Rah, Kirsten Oh, Gregory Lee, Jordan Ryan, May Young, Milton Eng

Our 2022 meeting in Denver went beautifully. Theme was "Asian American Theology and Evangelicalism." Papers were engaging, discussion enlightening and dinner afterwards sweet.

Jonathan Tran Reading Group

Since the publication of his new book in 2022, a reading group has formed around Jonathan Tran's Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism (Oxford U. Press) and Milton is a part of this group. Years in the making, this provocative scholarly work challenges the prevailing "orthodoxy" in academic and political circles that the only thing that matters is "race." To put it bluntly in my own words, Jonathan argues "Sorry, but it's a little bit more complicated than that."

• … this book reframes conversations about race and racism from racial identity to political economy. In framing matters in terms of political economy, [this volume] reaches back to a trusted mode of analysis that has been obscured by the prevailing antiracist orthodoxy. (p. xvii)

Jonathan is a Vietnamese American colleague and friend who teaches theology and ethics at Baylor University in the George W. Baines Chair of Religion. More news to follow.

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