Tae Sung, Ph.D.

Leadership:
2022 CCCU Multi-Ethnic Leadership Development Institute (MELDI), WA.

Awards:
Michael and Stacey Koehn Endowed Fellowship in Critical Theory, UCI.
Donald and Dorothy Strauss Endowed Fellowship in English, UCI.
Regents' Fellowship, English, UCI.
Frederick and Bernice Bush Scholarship of Theology, Fuller.

ENG233 - Survey of American Literature I
ENG313 - American Multicultural Literature
ENG401 - Literary Theory and Criticism
ENG440 - Modern American Literature

American literature, religion, and philosophy.
History of rhetoric, literary criticism, and critical theory.
Pragmatism, phenomenology, pneumatology.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Dynamic Gifts: Literary Pragmatism in a Postsecular Age. (Monograph in progress)

Novel. (In progress)


PUBLICATIONS

Articles / Book chapters:

"Gift / The (Im)possible Conditions of Grace in Melville's Fiction." Literature and Religious Experience. Eds. Matthew J. Smith and Caleb D. Spencer. Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.

"In the Way of the Gift: The Conditions of Grace in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead." Special Issue on the Theology of Marilynne Robinson. Ed. Haein Park. Humanities, vol. 9, no. 32, spring 2020.

"'A New Sphere of Power': Religious Experience and the Language of Dynamic Gifts in William James." William James Studies, vol. 12, no. 2, fall 2016, pp. 52-79.


Reviews:

Review of Transcendentalism and the Cultivation of the Soul, by Barry M. Andrews. Emerson Society Papers, vol. 29, no. 1, spring 2019.

Review of Emerson's Metaphysics: A Song of Laws and Causes, by Joseph Urbas. Religion and Literature, vol. 50, no. 1-2, spring-summer 2018.

"The Study of World Religions in a Time of Crises: An Interview with Jack Miles." Books and Culture vol. 22, no. 3, 2016.

"Our Shared Brokenness: On Mass Incarceration." Rev. of Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson. Books and Culture vol. 22, no. 2, 2016.


References:

"Emerson's 'Self-Reliance' and American Literature." Colonial Era to the 19th Century in American Literature. Ed. Laura A. Leibman. Gale, 2016.

“Belief and Poetry: II. Early Modern to the Present.” Co-authored with Michael P. Clark. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Fourth edition. Ed. Roland Greene. Princeton UP, 2012.


DISSERTATION / THESIS

"Pragmatism and the Gift: Toward a Charismology of Dynamic Gifts in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Religion." Diss. University of California, Irvine, 2014. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2014.

"Discipline, Improvisation, and Style: the Language of Identity and Democracy in Ralph Waldo Ellison." MA thesis. University of California, Irvine, 2006.


SELECTED PRESENTATIONS & LECTURES

"The Sophistry of ChatGPT: Student Success in the Age of AI," keynote address for College of Arts & Sciences fall faculty gathering, California Baptist University, CA (2023).

"Biblical Justice and Smart Decarceration: Reflections on the Prophetic Imagination," keynote address for Division of Social Work fall faculty gathering, California Baptist University, CA (2023).

"Vocation and Time: How to Inhabit Christianity and Literature," presentation at the Conference on Christianity and Literature, Azusa Pacific University, CA (2023).

"Khoretic Energy," presentation at the International Melville Society Conference at Sorbonne Universite, Paris, France (2022).

"A Happier Reincarnation: The Rhetoric of Gifts in African American and Asian American Literature - Douglass, Du Bois, Sui Sin Far, Baldwin, and Younghill Kang's East Goes West," presentation at the Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association at UNLV, Las Vegas, CA (2021).

"Meteorological Questions for the Humanities: A Pragmatist Response to Postliberalism and Postsecularism," keynote address at the Conference on Christianity and Literature, Azusa Pacific University, CA (2020). [*Event canceled day before conference due to COVID-19]

"Revisiting Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa Address," keynote address at CBU's Alpha Chi Honor Society Induction Ceremony, Riverside, CA (2020).

"The Unappropriated Gift: Melville and the Measureless Measure of the Impersonal," presentation at the International Melville Society Conference at the University of Paris - Diderot, France (2019).

"Conditions of Grace: The Impossibility of the Gift in Herman Melville," presentation at the International Conference on Christianity and Literature at Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA (2019).

"'The Gift, To Be True': A Non-Economic Theory of Gifts in Ralph Waldo Emerson," presentation at Transcendentalist Intersections conference at the University of Heidelberg, Germany (2018).

"What Has Pragmatism To Do with Religion?" presentation at the American Literature Association, San Francisco, CA (2018).

"Shall We Flee or Plunder? A Parable (Loosely) about Augustine, Benedict, and Emerson," presentation at the Conference on Christianity and Literature at George Fox University, Portland, OR (2018).

"A Gospel of Power: Dynamic Gifts in Literary Pragmatism and Philosophical Hermeneutics," presentation at the Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association at Chaminade University, Honolulu, HI (2017).

"Multiculturalism, Pragmatism, and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man," colloquium lecture at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA (2016).

"Carpe Aeternitatem," Convocation Lecture for the Enduring Questions and Ideas series at Concordia University, Irvine, CA (2016).

"On Gadamer's Truth and Method: Recovering Philosophical and Rhetorical Hermeneutics for Today," presentation at the Conference on Christianity and Literature at California Baptist University, Riverside, CA (2016).

"Christianity and American Pragmatism," colloquia lecture for the MA in English program at Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA (2015).

"The Rhetoric of Divine Grace and Dynamic Gifts in Emerson and James," presentation at Sacred Literature, Secular Religion: A Conference on Cultural Practices at the Le Moyne College Religion and Literature Forum, Syracuse, NY (2015).

“The Rhetoric of Gratitude in the Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and Sui Sin Far,” presentation at the International Society for the History of Rhetoric at the University of Bologna, Italy (2011).

“Kenneth Burke and the Epilogue to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man,” guest lecture for English 102D, “The Age of Ralph Ellison,” undergraduate course by Professor Michael Szalay at UC Irvine (2011).

“For What Has Already Been Given: Religion and the Rorty Papers,” invited presentation at the UC Humanities Research Institute in celebration of the Richard Rorty archives in UC Irvine (2010).

“Whence the Twain Shall Meet? Rhetoric and Biblical Hermeneutics in Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana,” presentation at the International Society for the History of Rhetoric in Montreal, Canada (2009).