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Rebecca Y. Kim Faculty Profile

Rebecca Y. Kim

Professor of Sociology
Frank R. Seaver Chair in Social Science
Social Science Division, Seaver College
AC 249

Biography

Rebecca Y. Kim is the Frank R. Seaver Chair in Social Science. She is Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Ethnic Studies program at Pepperdine University. Her MA and her PhD are in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the intersections of religion, immigration, and race relations. She teaches courses on social theory, research methods, and race and ethnic relations.

Education

  • PhD, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
  • MA, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
  • BA, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

 

Books

  • Edwards, Korie Little and Rebecca Y. Kim. 2024. Estranged Pioneers: Race, Faith and Leadership in a Diverse World. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2015. The Spirit Moves West: Korean Missionaries in America. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2006. God’s New Whiz Kids? Second-generation Korean American Evangelicals on Campus. New York: New York University Press.

Recent Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

  • Kim, Rebecca Y. and Nick Rowe. 2024. “Faculty’s Positionality and Soul Care,” Workshop Notes: Lift Every Voice and Teach Colloquium at Hamline University, May 2023.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. and Rachael Murdock. 2023. “To Be Safe and Seen: BIPOC Gen Z Engagement in Evangelical Campus Ministries,” Religions 14 (8): 963. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14080963.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2023. “Evangelical Civil War on the College Campus: White Evangelical Right Framing Resistance to Racial Justice in 2020s America,” Journal for the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion 62(1): 88-104. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12852.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2022. “Making their Mark: Asian Americans and the Californian ‘Christian’ Landscape,” in Kirsteen Kim, ed., Migration, Transnationalism, and Faith in Missiological Perspective: Los Angeles as a Global Crossroads. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.
  • Edwards, Korie L. and Rebecca Kim. 2019. “Estranged Pioneers: The Personal Costs of Leading Multiracial Congregations for Black and Asian American Pastors.” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 80(4): 456-477.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2019. “Global American Evangelicals?” Featured Review Essay, Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 80(2): 263-267.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2019. “Toward an Asian American Evangelical Christianity.” ChristianityNext (Special Topics: Asian Americans and Evangelicals) 3:10-34.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2017. “Why are Missionaries in America? A Case Study of a Korean Mission Movement in the United States.” Missiology: An International Review 45(4): 426-440.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2016. “Evangelizing White Americans: Race, Sacrifice, and a Korean Mission Movement in America.” Open Theology 2: 668-680.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2014. “Migration and Conversion: the Korean American Christian Experience,” in Lewis R. Rambo and Charles E. Farhadian, eds., Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2014. “American Evangelicals Talking with God in their Minds.” Pastoral Psychology 63 (2): 207-214.
  • Zhou, Min, Margaret May Chin, and Rebecca Y. Kim. 2013. “The Transformation of Chinese America: New York v. Los Angeles.” Pp. 358-384 in David Halle and Andrew A. Beveridge, eds., New York and Los Angeles: The Uncertain Future. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. 2013. “Korean Missionaries: Preaching the Gospel to ‘All Nations,’ including the United States.” Pp. 179-202 in Afe Adogame and Shobana Shankar, eds., Religion on the Move! New Dynamics of Religious Expansion in a Globalizing World. Lieden: Brill Publishers.
  • Kim, Sharon and Rebecca Y. Kim 2012. “Second-generation Korean American Christians’ Communities: Congregational Hybridity.” Pp. 176-196 in Carolyn Chen and Russell Jeung, eds., Sustaining Faith Traditions: Race, Ethnicity and Religion among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation. New York: New York University Press.
  • Kim, Rebecca Y. and Sharon Kim. 2012. “Revival and Renewal: Korean American Evangelicals
    beyond Immigrant Enclaves.” Studies in World Christianity 18 (3): 291-312.

Areas of Expertise

  • Race and Ethnic Relations
  • Christian Congregations
  • Race and Ethnic Relations
  • Asian American Studies
  • Campus Evangelicalism

Topics

  • Sociology of Religion (Diversity and Multiracial Congregations)
  • Immigration and the Second Generation

Courses

  • Social Theory
  • Research Methods
  • Race and Ethnic Relations
  • Introduction to Sociology