

Simboli Hall 321
Telephone: 617-552-6512
Email: angela.harkins@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0002-1105-4165
Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish Prayers, Deuterocanon, Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses, Religious Experience, History of Interpretation
Dr. Angela Kim Harkins was born in Seoul, Korea and grew up in the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois. She completed her M.A. degree in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame with a concentration in biblical languages in 1997. She studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel under Emanuel Tov with funding from a Fulbright Fellowship in 1997-1998, an exciting year that coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. She returned to Notre Dame to begin her Ph.D. studies in the Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity area, with a minor in Syriac exegesis and Liturgical Studies. She wrote her dissertation on the Thanksgiving Hymns (Hebr. Hodayot) from Qumran under James C. VanderKam (2003).
Dr. Harkins arrived at the BC STM in 2015. She spent the previous two years in England where she held a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship at the University of Birmingham (309,235 Euros) for interdisciplinary research on religious experience and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prior to this fellowship, Dr. Harkins was a tenured Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department and a member of the Judaic Studies faculty at Fairfield University (Fairfield, CT), where she was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award by the College of Arts and Sciences in 2011.
Dr. Angela Kim Harkins is an active member of the Society of Biblical Literature and has chaired the Religious Experience in Antiquity section (2012-2017) and currently co-chairs the Prayer in Antiquity section. She also chairs the Qumran and Dead Sea Scrolls program unit of the International Society of Biblical Literature. She serves on the steering committee of the Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity (SBL). She has completed two terms on the SBL Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession (2017-2022). In 2021, Harkins served as the New England / Eastern Canada region of the SBL President. She has been a member of the Catholic Biblical Association since 1997 (full member in 2004). Dr. Harkins is a past board member of the Lilly National Network and Collegium: A Colloquy on Faith and the Intellectual Life. Dr. Harkins was a pre-tenure fellow at Wabash Center for Teaching Theology and Religion in 2010-2011, and two Wabash Peer-Mentoring Cluster Grant: “Non-canonical Texts, Non-canonical Bodies” (2018-2019), and “Korean-American Women and New Testament Studies” (2021-2022).
Dr. Harkins has published extensively on the topic of prayers, emotions, and religious experience in early Jewish and Christian texts. She has authored or edited eight books, and approximately three dozen scholarly articles and essays. Her latest monograph on religious experience and the early Christian text known as the Shepherd of Hermas is entitled, An Embodied Reading of the Shepherd of Hermas: The Book of Visions and its Role in Moral Formation, in the Studies in Ancient Religion and Culture series published by Equinox Publishing Ltd. (2023). Dr. Harkins has served as the executive editor of the Journal of Ancient Judaism (Brill) since 2022.
2023: An Embodied Reading of the Shepherd of Hermas: The Book of Visions and its Role in Moral Formation. Studies in Ancient Religion & Culture. Sheffield: Equinox, 2023.
2022: Experiencing the Shepherd of Hermas. Edited by Angela Kim Harkins and Harry O. Maier. Ekstasis 10. Berlin: De Gruyter.
2022: Experiencing Presence in the Second Temple Period: Revised and Updated Essays. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology Series 111. Leuven: Peeters Press.
2021: Selected Studies on Deuterocanonical Prayers. Edited by Angela Kim Harkins and Barbara Schmitz. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology Series 103. Leuven: Peeters Press.
2015: Religious Experience and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by Angela Kim Harkins and Mladen Popović. Dead Sea Discoveries 22.3.
2014: The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions. Edited by Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, John Endres, S. J. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
2014: The Fallen Angels Traditions: Second Temple Developments and Reception History. Edited by Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch and John Endres, S.J. CBQMS 53. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Biblical Association.
2012: A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam. 2 Vols. General Ed, Eric F. Mason; Vol. 1 edited by Samuel Thomas, Alison Schofield, and Eugene C. Ulrich; Vol. 2 edited by Kelley Coblentz Bautch, Angela Kim Harkins and Daniel Machiela. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 153.2. Leiden: Brill.
2012: Reading with an ‘I’ to the Heavens: Looking at the Qumran Hodayot through the Lens of Visionary Traditions. Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Medieval Period 3; Berlin: De Gruyter Press. Paperback edition was published by de Gruyter in 2018.