Sung (Seong) Hyun Lee, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor of Church and Ministry
About Sung
Sung H. Lee identifies herself as a scholar, pastoral caregiver and an ordained minister of the Korean Methodist Church. As an immigrant in the U.S. from South Korea, Sung saw a lot of immigrants struggle with racism, language barriers and cultural and systemic differences in the United States. These experiences motivated her to become an advocate for immigrants and international students, which resulted in her founding an organization, Sojourner Coaching, LLC, to support them.
As a scholar, Sung identifies herself as a Christian care ethicist and a scholar of pastoral care and counseling, whose core value is grounded in empathy. She endeavors to integrate theory and practice in her overarching research interests and through her own organization. Her research is primarily with an interdisciplinary approach, involving psychology, Christian ethics, and women鈥檚 and gender studies. Sung鈥檚 core research questions include: 鈥淗ow can our society and communities 鈥� especially faith-based ones 鈥� utilize various emotions to promote social justice and equality as well as spiritual growth such as empathy, anger and shame?鈥� and 鈥淲hat are the communal ways that communities of faith can empower diverse marginalized groups such as (im)migrants, racial minorities and sexually traumatized women?鈥�
Sung’s current interdisciplinary research focuses on promoting moral and communal values of mature empathy, and anger and its use to become a moral resource for social, gender and racial justice. She mainly draws on affect theory, psychoanalysis, social psychology, feminist Christian social ethics and pastoral theology.
Publications and public activities
Books
- The Power of Communal Empathy: Moral Implications of Empathy from Psychological and Care Ethics Perspectives in Responding to Sexual Violence in Faith-Based Community (tentative title) (Pickwick, 2024 – early 2025, planned release date).
- Self, co-author (Pastoral Counseling Society Publishing, Seoul, S. Korea, 2009).
Articles
- 鈥淐omparing Wesley鈥檚 Doctrine of Sanctification to the Concept of Cohesive Self in Self Psychology鈥� (Asian American Theological Forum, 2014).
Scholarship
- Dissertation
- The Power of Communal Empathy: Moral Implications of Empathy from Psychological and Care Ethics Perspectives in Responding to Sexual Violence in Faith-Based Community (Drew University, 2022).
- Theses
- 鈥淧astoral Care for Sexually Traumatized Women鈥� (Emory University, GA, 2010).
- 鈥淓clipse and Re-emergence of Maternity in Psychoanalysis from Freud to Kristeva鈥� (Methodist Theological University, Seoul, South Korea, 2007).
Presentations
- 鈥淲hen Empathy Meets Digital Activism鈥� (American Academy of Religion Annual Conference: Women and Religion Unit, 2020).
Public activities
- 鈥淒are to be Different鈥� (New Jersey Summit Branch of the Association of American University Women, NJ, 2016).
- 鈥淚nternational Students and Scholars, An Honest Conversation鈥� (Feminists Talk Religion Podcast in Feminist Studies in Religion, 2023).