keywords: american religious history, secularism, race, settler colonialism, popular culture, fan studies, performance studies, asian american studies, global korea.
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
“Continuities Amidst Change: Deforestation and Land Control in Late Choson and Colonial Korea,” Brown Journal of History vol. 14 (Providence, RI, June 2020): 34-46.
Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters
“How Disney Roleplay Groups Imagined Other Worlds (and Ours),” in Disney and Religion: A Small Spiritual World, After All, edited by Jodi Eichler-Levine (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming 2026).
Book Reviews
“Seeds of Mobilization: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea’s Democracy, written by Joan E. Cho,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations vol. 33, no. 1 (May 2026): 85-87.
“Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration by Yii-Jan Lin (review),” American Religion vol. 6, no. 2 (Spring 2025): 197-199.
Manuscripts in Progress
“Nonreligiosity,” in The Oxford Handbook of Asian American Religions, edited by Melissa Borja, Helen Jin Kim, and Justin K.H. Tse (co-authored with Tisa Wenger, chapter under review for an edited volume by Oxford University Press).
Theses
“Redefining Religion: Ruth Ozeki and the Protestant Secular,” M.A. thesis (Yale Divinity School, 2023). Advisor: Tisa Wenger. Reader: Sally M. Promey.
“A New Park, a Lost Town: Redefining the Legacy of U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan,” A.B. honors thesis (Department of History, Brown University, 2021). Advisor: Kerry Smith. Readers: Howard P. Chudacoff, Cindy A. Nguyen.
Public Writing
“Reimagining American Immigration: An Interview with Yii-Jan Lin,” Reflections (New Haven, CT: Yale Divinity School, Dec 2024).
“Sheets of Scattered Sand: Cantonese Protestants and the Secular Dream of the Pacific Rim by Justin K.H. Tse,” Reading Religion (Atlanta, GA: American Academy of Religion, April 2026).
“Religion in the Lands That Became America,” Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera (St. Louis, MO: John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, July 2025).
KARIS H. RYU 