Associate Professor of American Religious History Helen Jin Kim has won the 2024 Outstanding Achievement in History Award for her book Race for Revival: How Cold War South Korea Shaped the American Evangelical Empire (2022, Oxford University Press) from the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS).
In Race for Revival, Kim reexamines the narrative of modern evangelicalism through an innovative transpacific framework, offering a new vantage point for understanding evangelical history from the Korean War to the rise of Ronald Reagan. She utilizes archival materials and oral histories using both English and Korean language sources to trace the relationship between South Korea and the U.S. while exploring how that relationship empowered a new brand of American evangelicalism. It is the first book to interpret the history of modern evangelical America from a transpacific perspective.
The AAAS award citation praises Kim’s book as “a remarkable and meticulous study …a timely contribution to both the field of transpacific history and our understanding of how religion continues to shape politics today.”
The annual Association of Asian American Studies Book Awards were established to honor the years of research, analysis, and writing that go into creating such projects, and highlight books that represent and prove the significance of Asian American studies in scholarship and writing. Awards are given out in seven categories: Poetry; Prose; History; Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Work; Literary Studies; Media, Performance and Visual Studies; and Social Sciences.
Kim and all of this year’s award recipients will be honored during the annual AAAS conference in Seattle from April 25-27.