Meet Princeton Seminary's 2022 New Faculty

Princeton Theological Seminary welcomes four new faculty to our campus community this academic year: Dr. KC Choi, Rev. Dr. Kimberly Wagner, Dr. Lisa J. Cleath, and Dr. Amelia Kennedy.

Dr. KC Choi joined the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary as the Kyung-Chik Han Chair in Asian American Theology, bringing to the role an overarching concern with racial and social justice. His 2019 book, Disciplined by Race: Theological Ethics and the Problem of Asian American Identity, articulated an emerging Asian American theological perspective while exploring the searing impact of white racism.

“I see Asian American theology as a sibling discourse to Latinx, Black, Womanist, Queer, and feminist theologies,” Choi says. “Just like its siblings, Asian American theology can speak from the experience of oppression, violence, and marginalization as it seeks the liberation of societies and peoples.”

Rev. Dr. Kimberly Wagner has seen firsthand how preaching can attend to the suffering of people who have experienced trauma. As an assistant professor of preaching at Princeton Seminary, Wagner aims to help her students develop the empathy and eloquence needed to reach communities both inside and beyond church walls.

“I hope to cultivate preachers who are gifted and compelling in the pulpit,” she says. “But I tell my students that the skills they gain in a preaching class will help them in whatever ministry they go into because they’ll learn to articulate the gospel and think biblically and theologically about the world around us, and the anxiety, fear, and hunger in people’s lives.”

Dr. Lisa J. Cleath, assistant professor of Old Testament at Princeton Seminary, brings a wealth of knowledge about the history and languages of the context in which the Hebrew Bible was created. “I'm interested in how it's been applied within these contexts, and especially in the American church context. For me, I have a passion for both that history and its application.”

While Cleath specializes in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, her work is especially focused on Second Temple Judaism. Cleath’s recent research included examining ancient Near Eastern politics and considering how text serves to authorize political action. This is relevant to the United States in church history because people use the Bible here to authorize their actions, she explains. Because of this, Cleath researched historical cases in the ancient world that highlight how texts are connected to political authorization.

Dr. Amelia Kennedy, assistant professor of the history of medieval Christianity, focuses her research on the experiences of medieval monks and nuns, for whom some amount of discomfort was a shared experience widely understood by young and old alike. Her current book project focuses on aging in medieval monasticism, c. 950-1350 — not just what aging theoretically meant for these individuals, but also how aging played out in various circumstances. Her research asks questions that are just as applicable today, for example: When do we become “old” and what does that mean? What’s important in quality eldercare? When should we retire?

Kennedy's recent and in-progress articles on disability also explore chronic illness and its impact on one’s sense of time. “I’m very excited to think through and teach these concepts in the environment of the Seminary,” she says. “Age, aging, and disability are so important to think through, and it’s ironic that our advancing technologies haven’t answered some of the same questions asked in the Middle Ages.”