On December 6, 2020 Dr. Gale A Yee received a Doctor of Divinity (honoris causa) from Virginia Theological Seminary. PANAAWTM wants to congratulate Dr. Yee for such an honor.
She was supposed to receive this degree during Commencement in May, but because of Covid-19, she had to receive the degree virtually.
The citation said: "One cannot consider recent scholarship on the Bible without seeing your influence at every turn. Your questions and commitments concerning the material intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, class, and colonial relations with regard to biblical texts have changed the field."
Dr. Yee received her doctorate from St. Michael's College in Toronto in 1985 and became one of the first women of color ever to receive a PhD in Biblical Studies. She has published Poor Banished Children of Eve, Composition and Tradition in the Book of Hosea, and Jewish Feasts in the Gospel of John and edited many others.
In 2014, she was recognized as a qianbei (respected elder) by the Ethnic Chinese Biblical Scholars. In 2019 she became the first woman of color and the first Asian American to be the President of the Society of Biblical Literature. She was the Nancy W. King Professor of Biblical Studies at Episcopal Divinity School until her retirement.
She served as a faculty advisor of PAMAAWTM for many years and helped to organize several PANAAWTM annual meetings in Boston and in California. We are grateful to her service and we wish her well and consider her our qianbei too!