Dean of the Theological School

Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan

Administrative Assistant
Maria Iannuzzi
miannuzz@drew.edu
973-408-3582

About Jeffrey Kuan

Ph.D., Emory University
M.T.S., Southern Methodist University
B.Th., Trinity Theological College (Singapore)

Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan became Dean of the Theological School and Professor of Hebrew Bible in 2011. A scholar of ancient Israelite and Near Eastern history, Dr. Kuan’s current research addresses Asian and Asian American hermeneutics, as well as approaches to biblical instruction for the churches. He is currently completing a commentary on the biblical book of Joshua.

Kuan began his career serving as an associate pastor from 1980 to 1983 in Malaysia. In 2002, he became an ordained elder and full member of the California-Nevada Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. Since 2008, he has served as the Vice President of the Board of Directors of the UMC’s General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. In 2004, the Reconciling Ministries of the California-Nevada Annual Conference named him the winner of the Turtle Award for “sticking his neck out” for the LGBTQ community.

Dean Kuan previously served on the faculties of the Pacific School of Religion and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and the South East Asia Graduate School’s Regional Faculty. He also served as Old Testament Editor for the multi-volume New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible from 2006 to 2009. He currently serves on the Council of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Publications

“Biblical Interpretation and the Rhetoric of Violence and War,” Asia Journal of Theology 23, no. 2 (2009): 189-203.

Ways of Being, Ways of Reading: Asian-American Biblical Interpretation, co-edited with Mary F. Foskett (Chalice, 2006).

“Reading Amy Tan Reading Job,” in Timothy J. Sandoval and Carleen R. Mandolfo, eds., Relating to the Text: Interdisciplinary and Form-Critical Insights on the Bible, 263-274 (Continuum, 2004).

“My Journey into Diasporic Hermeneutics,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 56, no. 1-2 (2002): 50-54.

“Šamši-ilu and the Realpolitik of Israel and Aram-Damascus in the Eighth Century BCE,” in J. Andrew Dearman and M. Patrick Graham, eds., The Land That I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honor of J. Maxwell Miller, 135-151 (Sheffield Academic, 2001).

“Diasporic Reading of a Diasporic Text: Identity Politics and Race Relations and the Book of Esther,” in Fernando F. Segovia, ed., Interpreting beyond Borders, 161-173 (Sheffield Academic, 2000).

“Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World,” Voices from the Third World 19, no. 1 (1996): 242-246.

Neo-Assyrian Historical Inscriptions and Syria-Palestine: Israelite/Judean-Tyrian-Damascene Political and Commercial Relations in the Ninth–Eighth Centuries BCE (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary, 1995).

History and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of John H. Hayes, co-edited with M. Patrick Graham and William P. Brown (Sheffield Academic, 1993).