Ki-Eun Jang

Dr. Ki-Eun Jang specializes in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Middle Eastern Studies. With an interest in advancing socially engaged humanities in the study of the Hebrew Bible, her research engages both the social world of ancient West Asia that produced the Hebrew Bible and our intellectual legacies of modernity that shape the ways in which communities of readers conceive of the past and envision the future. Her forthcoming book, Contesting Labeled Identities: The Sociology of ‘Gentilics’ in Biblical and Northwest Semitic Literature, draws on the history of ideas of race and ethnicity, comparative philology, and the literary-historical study of the Hebrew Bible and cognate literature in seeking to answer the question of how modern assumptions about classification and identification collide with ancient assumptions and how the former informs the interpretation of the latter. 

Dr. Jang is currently developing a book project that focuses on historical, legal, religio-political, and literary-poetic constructions of Canaanite identities, discourses, and their legacies from the Hebrew Bible to modern reconfigurations. 

Prior to joining the Theology Department at Fordham University in 2022, Dr. Jang was a visiting assistant professor of Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York (2021–2022) and a postdoctoral lecturer in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (2021). 

At Fordham, she has taught undergraduate and graduate courses such as Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, The Bible as Migration Literature, Otherness in the Hebrew Bible, and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Interpretation.

Ph.D., M.Phil., in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, New York University
M.A., Hebrew University of Jerusalem
B.A., Korea University

Literary history of the Hebrew Bible, law and identities in the Hebrew Bible, scribes and
historiography in antiquity, ancient Hebrew and Northwest Semitic philology,
postcolonial criticism and biblical studies, histories and receptions of biblical
scholarship, comparative migration and ethnic studies, histories of theories of race and
ethnicity, Bible and global Asia

Publications 

Dr. Jang's research profile can be accessed at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6498-3590

“The 1923 Kanto Massacre, the Gibeonites in 2 Samuel 21, and Reinscribing Homo Sacer through a Hermeneutics of Mnemonic Solidarity,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 60.4 (forthcoming).

“Literary Historiography as a Method for State-Building: Competing Traditions and Trans-historical Memories of Saul and David’s Kingship,” King, State, Empire in the Hebrew Bible. Edited by Jaeyoung Jeon et al. Berlin: De Gruyter (forthcoming).

Review of Hindus and Their Christian Bible by R. S. Sugirtharajah, Biblical Interpretation (forthcoming).

“Biblical Aramaic Gentilics Reconsidered: Non-Ethnic Labels, Relational Adjectives, and the Mechanisms of Classification,” Aramaic Studies 23.1 (2025):1–21.

“The Buried Abimelech Tradition in Judges 10:1: A Case of Literary Doubling,” Vetus Testamentum (published online ahead of print 2025). https://doi.org/10.1163/15685330-bja10203

“The Problems of Sons of Gods, Daughters of Humans, and the Nephilim in Genesis 6:1–4: A Reassessment,” Religions 16.8, 972 (Special Issue: The Hebrew Bible: A Journey Through History and Literature). https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16080972

“Otherness in the Hebrew Bible,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Biblical Studies. Edited by Christopher Matthews. New York: Oxford University Press, 23 May 2024. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195393361/obo-9780195393361-0332.xml

“Saul’s Israel, the ‘Hebrews,’ and Identity Politics in 1 Samuel 13–14,” Journal of Biblical Literature 142.2 (2023): 589–608.

(Solicited) Review of Reading Biblical Texts Together: Pursuing Minoritized Biblical Criticism. Edited by Tat-siong Benny Liew and Fernando F. Segovia. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 85.4 (2023): 809–12.

“The Circulation of the Storm-God’s Struggle with the Death-God Motif in Ugarit and Babylonia,” Semitica 65 (2023): 5–31.

“‘Nobody’ as an Official Identity: Biblical Gentilics, the Life of ‘FNU,’ and Asian America,” Journal of Asian American Theological Forum 10.2 (2023): 11–15.

Review of Race and Biblical Studies: Antiracism Pedagogy for the Classroom. Edited by Tat-siong Benny Liew and Shelly Matthews. Review of Biblical Literature 09/2023. https://www.sblcentral.org/home/bookDetails/1001418

“The ‘Energic’ -n of the Non-Prefix Conjugation in Ugaritic: A New Proposal,” Semitica 64 (2022): 5–20.

“Debates about Migration Have Never been Simple—Just Look at the Hebrew Bible,” The Conversation, 15 September 2022. https://theconversation.com/debates-about-migration-have-never-been-simple-just-look-at-the-hebrew-bible-180652?utm_medium=article_clipboard_share&utm_source=theconversation.com

Review of The Finger of the Scribe: How Scribes Learned to Write the Bible by William M. Schniedewind. Ancient Jew Review (2022). https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2022/1/31/book-note-the-finger-of-the-scribe-how-scribes-learned-to-write-the-bible

(Solicited) Review of Behind the Scenes of the Old Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts. Edited by Jonathan S. Greer, John W. Hilber, and John H. Walton. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 82.1 (2020): 152–55.