Transitioning from Early to Mid-Career as an Asian American Scholar of Religion

Abstract

This article explores the post-tenure challenges and opportunities for Asian American scholars of religion. Although the pressure of service can be a burden on mid-level faculty, service can offer a fulfilling way to integrate one’s scholarly work and one’s commitment to Asian American communities. Moreover, even as excellence in teaching often is not given much (if any) weight in promotion to full professor, it can be mutually illuminative to experiment with teaching at the same time as one is also reassessing one’s field and place within it. Indeed, the mid-career offers a unique standpoint from which one can bring teaching and research together in a synergistic way. Revised approaches to courses in comparative theology and Hinduism both enhanced the author’s scholarship as well as allowed her to better serve her students. Integrating teaching, scholarship, and advocacy can be deeply productive for Asian American scholars of religion after tenure.