The University of Pittsburgh Press is pleased to announce the launch of a new scholarly series: Contemporary Asian Catholics (CAC). CAC will publish scholarly books that explore how the most populous continent, Asia, and the world’s largest religious organization, Catholicism, intersect and redefine each other. Through different case studies, the series aims at redefining ways of approaching and conceptualizing processes through which Asian Catholicism is produced, contested, and shared.

CAC will foster interdisciplinary research on Asian Catholics in contemporary societies, with the aim of understanding the sociocultural dynamics that characterize diverse Catholic communities in Asian and Asian diasporic settings. The series will feature scholarly analyses of the lived realities of Asian Catholics, their socioeconomic contributions to Asian and non-Asian societies, their interreligious and political engagements with other Christian denominations and other faith systems, their production of transnational circulations, and their influence on global Catholicism and world Christianity.

Welcoming edited volumes and monographs from new and experienced scholars, CAC will foreground scholarship in anthropology, sociology, and other fields in the social sciences while engaging actively with complementary approaches in history, religious studies, and the arts that shed light on the contemporary experiences of Asian Catholics around the world.

CAC will be edited by Rowena Robinson, Professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and Bernardo E. Brown, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the International Christian University in Tokyo. An international editorial board of distinguished academics will advise the editors and the Press on series matters.

“What draws me to this series is its comparative and collaborative potential to engage with the making, unmaking, and remaking of Catholicism and Catholic identity across socially and culturally diverse communities in Asia and beyond,” says Robinson. “My hope is that this series will sharpen our comprehension of the complexity of social and cultural interchange between Catholicism and other religious traditions and enable a profounder grasp of the connections and collisions that mark the historical, social, and cultural relationships of different Asian societies to one another.”

“Beyond missionary histories and ties to Western spheres of influence, Asians have made Catholicism their own and transformed its practice and community dynamics in ways that are almost unrecognizable to non-Asian observers,” comments Brown. “By demonstrating that Catholicism is not merely a cultural and religious import to Asia, this series will play an important role in the scholarship on Asian religions.”

Inquiries should be directed to William Masami Hammell, Senior Acquisitions Editor: whammell@upress.pitt.edu. Submission information is available on the University of Pittsburgh Press website: https://upittpress.org/book-submission/. Once up and running, the series aims to publish two to three books each year.