Yohana A Junker
Vice President for Institutional Research and Planning &
Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation and Art
Claremont School of Theology
A native of the Bronx, has been a member of the Society of Jesus since 1958. He was ordained a priest in 1971.
lienhard@fordham.edu | Bronx, New York 10458
yjunker@cst.edu / faculty page
Biography
I'm an educator, visual artist, and Assistant Professor of Art, Religion, and Culture at Claremont School of Theology and Louisville Institute Postdoc Fellow. I received my Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley in 2019. My ongoing research probes the salient intersections among the fields of art history, eco-criticism, decolonial studies, and contemporary Indigenous aesthetics. My dissertation entitled “Unsettling the Landscape: Appropriation, Representation, and Indigenous Aesthetics in the Land Art of the American Southwest” investigated how the Land Art movement of the American Southwest displays a colonial reminiscence and theological vibrancy while the Indigenous artistic production of North America encapsulates a decolonial poetics of resistance.
Select Publications
Forthcoming, “Walking with the Land: Indigenous Aesthetics, Decolonial Pilgrimage,
and the Sacred work of Memory” forthcoming book project.
Contemporary Art as
Pilgrimage Journey and Sacred Site, Fall 2026.
“Imaging Loss and Longing: Doris Salcedo Art and the Power of Collective
Testimony,” in In Color: Embodied Approaches to Theopoetics. Eerdmans, Spring 2024.
“Deepening Belonging: A Contemplative Practice of Relational Flourishing,” in Showing up in Our Fullness: Contemplative Practitioners in Higher
Education, Routledge, Spring 2024.
“Pedagogy as Practices of Acolhimento,” Journal on Teaching, Wabash Center for
Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, Vol. 5 No. 1 (2024): Teaching
Identity, March 2024.
“Weaving Land and Water: On the Poetics of Diasporic and Indigenous Resistance,”
in A Curious Regard: Religion and Contemporary Art, Ron Bernier and Rachel
Smith, editors, Routledge, May 2023.
“Interreligious Pedagogies: Indigenous and Afro-Atlantic Religious Traditions and the
Visual Arts,” for the Georgetown Companion to Interreligious Studies, Georgetown,
Spring 2022.
“Unsettling the Gaze: Bathsheba between Verse and Image,” Painted Portrayals:
The Art of Characterizing Biblical Figures, SBL Press, Fall 2021.
“Decolonizing Landscapes: Artistic Activism and Eco-religious Imagination.”
In Religion and Sustainability: Interreligious Resources, Interdisciplinary Responses,
edited by Rita D. Sherma & P. Bilimoria, Springer,
Fall 2021.
“The Mandate to Regenerate All Our Relations: On SARS COVID-19 and the
Uprisings for Black Lives,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 36.2, Indiana
University Press, Fall 2020.
“Breathing | Being | Praying Meditations: The Generative Possibilities of the Arts,” in
AAR Spotlight on Teaching: Trauma-informed Pedagogy, Fall 2020.
TCP Books
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