Lines of Inquiry is a new APARRI blog series highlighting the research of APARRI members, what led them to their field of study, and what influences shape the person behind the scholarship. For our inaugural feature, we spoke with Chanhee Heo (Washington University in St. Louis) about her graduate work, how her communities have shaped her research, and APARRI’s role as a space for meaningful collaboration.
Read the full conversation below.
- Tell us a bit about your research interests. How do the study of Asians and Asian Americans and the study of religion intersect in your work?
My research explores concepts of race, religion, empire, and migration across the Pacific. I examine how the idea of race as constitutive of religion crossed the Pacific from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, following individuals and ideas moving between countries. My dissertation, “Thy Kin-dom Come: Imagining the First Christian Nation in the East,” is part of this research. It tells stories of Korean migrants whose racial contestations and negotiations both shaped and were shaped by their religious understandings and practices. While exploring people’s desires, memories, and emotions in their response to their ongoing realities, I also write these stories as a narrative history. Through these stories, I draw conceptual and periodical links during a relatively underexplored time in Asian/American history. I use an interdisciplinary approach that connects religious studies, Asian and Asian American studies, and transpacific studies while challenging an assumed US centrality in these fields.
- What drew you to study religion in the first place?
Religion has been a strong presence throughout my life. I grew up in a Christian community in South Korea. I spent many summers participating in church activities, and some of those memories have stayed with me (regardless of my relationship to church). I remember summers when missionaries would visit our local church and stay at my parents’ home because they volunteered to host them. I remember lying in bed next to one of the visiting missionaries, whom I called “aunt,” and listening to her stories. The stories weren’t always about her work, but often about her travels and encounters around the world, shared in a way that fascinated me and thus kept me up so late. I also grew up seeing my grandmother begin each day with early morning prayer services and end it by writing Bible verses into a notebook. Christian artifacts, such as illustrations of Jesus and silver crosses, adorned every corner of her house. Often, when I visited her, she was accompanied by other church friends, who would have a Bible study group or prayer meeting. National holiday celebrations such as New Year’s Day and Chuseok for my family turned into Christian worship services under her lead, highlighting her way of making every gathering sacred.
It wasn’t until I moved to the United States that I began to engage with religion more critically. Living in Nashville, Tennessee, where I first settled down for my Master’s program, I became more aware of race as a defining part and critical category to grapple with. Being in the South, far from the relatively homogenous society I was used to, I had to continuously negotiate a different sense of identity. That experience led me to explore the complicated entanglement of religion, particularly Christianity, race, and migration, and how they shape individual and collective experiences in a transnational context.
- As a recent PhD graduate, what has most surprised you as you’ve progressed through your PhD program? And how have the resources, opportunities, and communities within your department or university helped support or shape your research?
I was surprised to learn that doing a scholarship can take many different forms. Beyond conducting archival research and writing papers, I also wrote an op-ed based on my research. It began when I discussed with my advisor, Dr. Kathryn Gin Lum, about the introduction of my research paper, and how I was considering including a reference to a recent event that had occurred in South Korea. She suggested that I instead write an op-ed about it, and I took her advice, not expecting to get published but thinking that it could be meaningful enough to consider my historical research in relation to contemporary issues. Publishing an op-ed was a fascinating experience as it allowed me to engage with the public, generating talking points about a White Christian-centered American narrative in a global context. This experience of turning my research into more accessible and translatable forms also offered a reflection on how I should approach teaching.
Related to this eye-opening experience, American Religions in a Global Context Initiative (ARGC) at Stanford has been the greatest support that helped shape my research. Led by Dr. Kathryn Gin Lum, this interdisciplinary group of faculty and students provided a space to workshop our research papers, meet scholars and discuss their work, and initiate and organize public-facing events that broaden public understanding of why American religions matter within and beyond national boundaries. Being part of ARGC, I was able to engage with outstanding scholarship in the field of American religions, for example, those by Dr. Judith Weisenfeld, Dr. Helen Jin Kim, Dr. Lloyd Barba, Dr. Emily Suzanne Clark, and more. I had an insightful conversation about race, religion, and Asian American studies while serving as a moderator for an event with Dr. Melissa Borja, Dr. Jonathan Tran, and Dr. Kathryn Gin Lum. Along with other graduate students, I recently invited the musician historian No-No Boy (Dr. Julian Saporiti) and was in conversation with him at a live concert on “Singing Asian American History.” Dr. Saporiti and I discussed music as a medium of history telling, creating and extending an invitation to the public to engage with Asian American history and Buddhist reflection, and what it means to be ethical in this challenging time. Stanford Public Humanities, where I was a fellow, and Stanford Asian American Research Center and other programs also offered amazing support for this event.
In addition to ARGC, Transpacific History and Culture, an intellectual community that my colleague Zoë Gioja and I initiated, was also an important community that expanded my scholarly scope beyond religious studies. Across departments and disciplines (History, English, East Asian Literature and Culture, Religious Studies, and Modern Thought and Literature), this community centers on transpacific studies and we not only shared work, but also wrote, practiced qualifying exams, and went to a conference together. I learned that collaborative work is not only possible, but fun! Academia should never be a solitary endeavor.
Beyond my institution, I enjoyed conversations with the Race and Religion working group at University of California at Berkeley. Thanks to Derek Wu, who organized this group and generously invited other graduate students in the region, I got to know fellow students and learn more about their work. This group’s efforts to foster conversations across institutions very much echo the collaborative ethos of APARRI.
- How has your experience with APARRI impacted you, whether professionally or personally? Are there any memorable experiences or moments that stand out?
My experience with APARRI has taught me how meaningful a community can be. I still think about the APARRI conference when people went around in the main hall, introducing themselves through fun prompts. From high school students to senior professors, everyone got to connect to another person they didn’t know before. It is rare to see that kind of multi-generational interaction, especially at academic conferences. What stood out to me wasn’t just the interaction itself, but the way the space encouraged and cultivated openness that made participation feel natural. Later when I joined the conference program committee, I realized how intentional all of this was–how much thought, time, and care had gone into shaping that environment. Seeing the behind-the-scenes work helped me to appreciate the APARRI space even more and all the efforts that made it possible.
Another memorable experience with APARRI was the working group opportunity to create a podcast on Asian American religions and spiritualities (project title: Unheard Soundscape; podcast title: Cha-Tea Circle). At the heart of this project was the friendship I shared with my co-hosts, and a craving to question, complicate, and negotiate what Asian/America means for us. It was an opportunity to do something different, something fun. We met regularly, shared some inspirations from readings and how that related to our academic and creative work. For conversations and soundscapes for the podcast series, we spoke with people from diverse communities, whose stories have been unheard or underrepresented. The process was collaborative, which helped us attend to multisensorial perceptions and experiences and bring creative attention to Asian/American religious spaces. Through this project, we tried to think differently about what counts as knowledge and how soundscapes can connect people across racial, ethnic, generational, and religious differences. This project allowed me to explore what matters to me while also expanding how I think and work.
- What do you like to do for fun?
I enjoy spending time in nature with my friends, my partner, and our dog Sasha. When I was on the Stanford campus, I often walked around Lake Lagunita, hiked the Dish trails, or visited nearby state parks with friends. Living in California made it easy to explore a wide range of landscapes, from the cliffs of Half Moon Bay, to the mountains near Tahoe, to the Monterey coastline. In these places, I found joy in little moments: the reflection of the sun on the ocean, the clear breeze on a mountain trail, the way light filters through the leaves, and the smell of soil underfoot. Last year, I with some friends tried snow hiking for the first time at Hallasan in Jejudo island, South Korea. It wasn’t the most ideal weather for hiking–the mixture of snow and icy drizzle soaked our clothes and made it hard to see–but the eventual view of the mountain with blanketed frosty branches and cloud made it worth every step. Even with freezing feet and constant snot, the stillness felt otherworldly. Lately, I’ve been spending some time in my garden, growing cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and eggplants in my backyard. I’ve never had much success with plants before, but this gardening has been going well so far; my first harvest–three mini cucumbers–was a small delight, although they were not somehow edible (too bitter!). There is something satisfying finding rhythms with nature, where I feel I most belong.
- Lastly, if you were able to go back in time to when you first started graduate school and give yourself a piece of advice, what would you say?
I would encourage my earlier self to be braver about participating in a community like APARRI in the early stages of graduate school. In my first few years, I thought I needed to wait until I was more “ready”–after figuring out my dissertation topic and having done with some research so I could contribute something interesting to the conversation. But I’ve come to see that APARRI is a space where ideas can begin to take shape through conversations with fellow students and other scholars, where research interests can expand learning from other scholars’ insightful work, and where methods can be reconsidered through helpful discussions and guidance. We are all somewhere in the middle of the process. We all need conversational partners. We all benefit from support and perspective. And APARRI is such a welcoming space to meet people with generosity, care, and a commitment to learning together and finding our needs wherever we are in this process.
Chanhee Heo is a postdoctoral research associate at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her PhD in Religious Studies and History (minor) at Stanford University. Her current book project, Thy Kin-dom Come: Imagining the First Christian Nation in the East examines Korean migrants’ evolving ideas of race and religion as they traversed the Pacific from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth century.