Theresa Yugar
Photo: Luke Schaefer
Dr. Theresa A. Yugar is a Peruvian American scholar in religion whose scholarly focus is on women, ecology, and climate change on a global level. She is a graduate of Harvard University with a master’s degree in Feminist Theology and has a PhD from Claremont Graduate University in the field of Women Studies in Religion. Her research interests include creating counter narratives in course curriculum, reclaiming the native indigenous cosmology within a Buen Vivir ecological framework, reimagining Andean colonial frameworks, and reflecting on 17th century Novohispaña Latina woman Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in a contemporary U.S. context.
Dr. Yugar is the Chief Editor for the book, Valuing Lives, Healing Earth: Religion, Gender, and Life on Earth (Peeters, Belgium, 2021), which focuses on women who embody commitments to healing the earth rendered vulnerable by problematic social systems in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. She is also the author of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Feminist Reconstruction of Biography and Text (Wipf and Stock, 2014). She is the scriptwriter for the TED-Ed Lessons Worth Sharing "History’s Worst Nun," which has been viewed nine million times since its publication in November 2019. Dr. Yugar has also been recognized by The Peruvian Consulate, in Lima, with a diploma for organizing the Santo Niño de la Mascaipacha (Holy Child of Cuzco) cultural event at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral, in Los Angeles, which reclaims the “ancestral cult of the Peruvian Andes.”
