Jane Naomi Iwamura

Faculty Profile

Dr. Jane Iwamura is Professor of Religious Studies at University of the West. Her research
focuses on Asian American religions, race and popular culture in the United States (with an
emphasis on visual culture). Dr. Iwamura’s publications include Virtual Orientalism: Religion and Popular Culture in the U.S. (Oxford 2011) and the co-edited volume, Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America (Routledge 2003). She has also written on Japanese American lived religions, as well as the intersection of religion and Asian American literary production, and her articles have appeared in American Quarterly, Amerasia Journal, and Pacific World.

Dr. Iwamura co-founded the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI), for which she currently is a Luce Grant Co-PI and Senior Advisory Board member. She also serves on the National Editorial Board of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.

Selected Publications

Iwamura, Jane Naomi. Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Iwamura, Jane Naomi, and Paul Spickard, eds. Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Busto, Rudy V., and Jane Naomi Iwamura. “’A Look at New Worlds’: The Japanese American
Astronaut and Asian American Transcendence.” In Theologies of the Multitude for the Multitudes: The Legacy of Kwok Pui-Lan, edited by Rita Nakashima Brock and Tat-siong Benny Liew, 403–30. Claremont, CA: Claremont Press, 2021.

Iwamura, Jane Naomi. “When Buddha and Jesus Danced.” In Asian and Asian American Women in Theology and Religion: Embodying Knowledge, edited by Kwok Pui Lan, 75–88. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.