Karis Ryu

Karis Ryu | 류혜원 is a doctoral student in Religious Studies investigating the construction of Asian American subjectivity by the American church. She is particularly interested in how “race” and “religion” were and are taught and internalized as theological concepts in American, Korean, and transnational religious institutions in order to systematically construct bodies and enforce behaviors—and how people in these contexts assert other ways of inhabiting their personhoods through creativity and art. As a cultural historian, her media of interest are primarily past and present forms of popular culture. Her research can be generally triangulated across the fields of American religious history, Asian American studies, and Korean studies. She grew up as a U.S. military dependent.

Alongside her scholarship, Karis is a fiction writer, essayist, and poet. She graduated magna cum laude with an AB in History and East Asian Studies from Brown University in 2021, and earned her MAR (Master of Arts in Religion) in the History of Christianity from Yale Divinity School in 2023.