Joshua Rumbaoa Jerome Garcia is a Ph.D. candidate at The Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley studying Asian American theologies and religions, specializing in hermeneutics. His dissertation project, entitled Peril! In the House of Omri: The Asiatic Racial Form and Biblical Hermeneutics, engages critical theory from Asian and Asian American literary criticism and cultural studies to formalize critical theories of racial formation as theological analytics and illuminates how the intellectual viability of contextual theology is inherently tied to the material and political commitments of ethnic studies.

Joshua holds master’s degrees in religion and theology from Yale University and Boston University, respectively, as well as dual bachelor’s degrees in psychology and biblical studies from George Fox University. When not struggling through critical theory, he tries to consume pour over coffee, romcoms, and world football as unpretentiously as possible.