Angela Xia

Angela Xia is a PhD candidate in the department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on religion, health and political economy in the modern United States, with particular interests in the social effects of privatization, the relationship between religion and capitalism, gendered expectations of labor and caregiving, and the way embodied conditions, such as disability or illness, shape religious subjectivity. 

Her dissertation, currently titled "The Rest of Life: Care and Aging in American Protestantism, 1916-2000," examines how Protestant leaders and laypeople across the 20th century have answered the question: who should care for the elderly, and what should that care look like? While caring for older generations is a familiar practice in the history of Christianity, in the twentieth century United States this task increasingly became the province of secular, public institutions. “The Rest of Life" analyzes how American churches negotiated their relationship with two such institutions -- the welfare state and biomedicine -- in their attempts to privatize pensions and make care for the aging a labor of love rather than of compensation. 

At Penn, Angela is involved with the Center for Teaching and Learning, where she was a 2021-2022 Fellow For Teaching Excellence, and the Center for Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, where she is pursuing a graduate certificate. Prior to doctoral study, Angela received a B.A. in American Studies from Columbia University, where she taught in Columbia Knowledge for Freedom Initiative, a liberal arts seminar and college mentoring program for New York City high school students.