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PAPERS

Knowledge Injustice in the 
Theological Library
Kris Veldheer, Library Director, Catholic Theological Union

ABSTR ACT:  This paper gives an overview of my work with decolonial 
and postcolonial issues in the theological library based on my 2023 
doctoral work for my Doctor of Ministry degree. In it, I assign the 
roles of keepers, producers and providers of knowledge to theological 
librarians and examine these roles through a framework from Kwok 
Pui-lan. I include thoughts and interpretations from a wide range of 
decolonial and postcolonial thinkers as well as aspects of ritual theory. 
I also draw from survey work I did of Catholic Theological Union stu-
dents and theological library directors.

Before I begin this paper, I have two caveats. 

First, this paper is based on the Doctor of Ministry Thesis-Project 
that I had originally proposed in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-
19 pandemic. In the beginning, I wanted to focus exclusively on inter-
national students because Catholic Theological Union’s enrollment 
usually runs about 40% students from outside of North America, 
and my DMin was going to focus on international student use of 
the library. But as COVID-19 continued, I realized that using that 
category (international students) excluded another whole group of 
CTU students, namely immigrants and refugees, or the descendants 
of immigrants and refugees. Why is this important? Because to 
understand the students at CTU and how they use the library, I had 



32    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

to understand the contexts they came from, not just their country of 
origin. Many of my so-called “American” students grew up in ethnic 
communities attending church services in a language other than 
English and using a version of the Bible that wasn’t in English. Some 
even served as the family translator, bridging the gap between the 
community of English speakers in the United States and the language 
or world their families came from in the Majority World. Essentially, 
they lived in two or more cultures. There were also students who 
had come from academic disciplines outside of religion, theology, 
or even the humanities, for whom doing research in a theological 
library was a mystery. So I broadened my research group to include 
all students at CTU, who then formed the basis for my study. 

Second, I would encourage those who are interested in a much 
fuller treatment of the topic to read my DMin thesis, “Epistemic 
Injustice in the Theological Library: A case study of the Paul Bechtold 
Library at Catholic Theological Union” (Veldheer 2023). 

Let’s start with the abstract from my DMin, because I certainly 
cannot cover everything in the confines of the conference presenta-
tion; but the abstract may help you better understand what I was 
trying to accomplish with my project. 

Focusing on the Bechtold Library at CTU, I will explore the extent to which 
aspects of decoloniality affect the practices of a theological library and 
its diverse student body. Keeping, producing, and providing knowledge 
comes with cultural assumptions about what should be kept in a library, 
the types of knowledge they should help produce and services they should 
provide. As a member of Western society, the CTU library carries a legacy 
of colonial thought which has shaped the existing library collection and 
influences the knowledge produced by library users. Using the work of 
Kwok Pui-Lan, I will look through decolonial and postcolonial lenses to 
reveal injustice and inform possible interventions.(Veldheer 2023, iv)

Let’s get practical and ask: so what and where did this come from? 

Prior to starting my doctoral work, I spent 25 years watching 
students navigate the library from my perch behind either the ref-
erence desk or the circulation desk. For some, the library seemed 
like familiar territory, while for others, the library was a wide-eyed, 
white-knuckle ride through an exotic wilderness. Some students 
approached me with open enthusiasm for learning and research, 
while others fearfully approached, often to tell me they had no idea 



Papers    33

where to start. Others were intrepid souls who relied on previous 
experiences to navigate the library space. But what each one had in 
common was that they came out of different contexts with various 
cultural assumptions about the library. Often their experiences were 
vastly different experiences from my own, and the students carried 
baggage from previous library experiences about what they would 
find in the library and the services the library would provide. But 
referring back to my abstract, what makes this colonial and what 
do I mean by colonial thought?

Although not intentionally, academic libraries in the U.S. do not 
always meet the needs of students who may be unfamiliar with the 
Western educational setting. As Cuiyang Mu, a sciences librarian at 
the University of New Zealand, points out, “critical to the academic 
success of international students is their ability to use a research 
library and its databases. Culture and communication differences 
make international students uncertain about the subject resources 
and services available to them in a library. For instance, services such 
as interlibrary loan, librarian reference-by-appointments, and live 
online reference are concepts new to international students” (Mu 
2006, 49). Extending Mu’s observation of international students, I 
would argue that many students, not just international students—and 
even faculty—struggle with understanding library terminology. We 
who work in theological libraries have our own set of mysterious 
practices and rituals. Our ability to find lost books and obscure cita-
tions borders on magic. Cuiyang Mu’s comments about educational 
settings in New Zealand have resonance with educational settings in 
the U.S. Like the other theological libraries I have served in the past, 
the CTU library has a certain way of operating, from how library 
books are accessed to the length of time books can leave the library, 
and even how to use all of the electronic resources available through 
the library website. At one level, what Cuiyang Mu is referring to 
picks up on the actions of the library. Yet, Cuiyang Mu also men-
tions culture. I think whatever cultural differences may be present 
for students are exacerbated when they encounter library culture.

But what remains untouched in all of this talk about culture is 
how libraries wrestle with their place in the institutions they serve. 
ATS devotes an entire standard, namely Standard 6, to the library; 
and no other part of a theological school is singled out for a separate 
standard. Standard 6 opens with:



34    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Theological schools are communities of faith and learning grounded in 
the historical resources of the tradition, the scholarship of the academic 
disciplines, and the wisdom of communities of practice. Theological libraries 
are curated collections and instructional centers with librarians guiding 
research and organizing access to appropriate resources. Libraries and 
librarians partner with faculty in student learning and formation to serve 
schools’ educational missions and to equip students to be effective and 
ethical users of information resources. (ATS 2020, 10)

Then before looking at any other issue related to the library, Standard 
6 takes up the Purpose and Role of the Library (6.1, 6.2), requiring a 
clear mission statement for the library similar to the mission state-
ment for the school, and also that the administrators and stakeholders 
of a school understand the library as a “central academic resource 
that enhances the school’s educational programs” (ATS 2020, 10). But 
the question for me remains: although the standards of accreditation 
are clearly written about what the library is supposed to do, what 
is the reality? How is CTU library contributing to student learning 
and formation?

In 1960, a special issue of the journal Library Trends was subtitled 
“Current Trends in Theological Librarianship.” A conclusion about 
the special issue was drawn about theological libraries by Decherd 
Turner, who was then at the Bridwell Library of Southern Methodist 
University:

Theological libraries are indelibly tied to theological education. Analysis 
and judgment in every paper in this issue springs from the ever-present 
question: ‘What is the content, structure, and purpose of theological 
education?’ So sensitive to this foundation have been the contributors 
that no portion of the picture could be developed without some expres-
sion concerning the nature of theological education (Turner 1960, 281).

But theological libraries as an entity don’t run themselves. Rather, 
libraries like the one at CTU start with the librarians. Timothy 
Lincoln of Austin Presbyterian Seminary writes in his 2004 essay 
titled, “What’s A Seminary Library For”: “Theological libraries matter 
because patrons need skilled specialists to assist them in minding 
pertinent information” (Lincoln 2004, 4). Lincoln’s essay covers 
much ground furthering Turner’s conclusion that theological librar-
ies make substantial contributions to the educational missions of 
the schools that they serve. This may be a reason why ATS gives the 
library a separate standard equal to the academic degree programs.



Papers    35

So let’s put the CTU library in context. The CTU library is located 
within the Catholic Theological Union located in Chicago. CTU, by 
its own diversity statement,

Reaffirms its commitments to being an inclusive community that 
draws on diversity as a source of learning and understanding. We 
believe that diverse students, faculty, staff and curricular offer-
ings are essential for fostering inclusion and engagement and 
play vital roles in nurturing a welcome climate for all. (CTU 2020) 

The diversity statement is aspirational in nature but speaks to the 
need for the CTU library to serve that diverse population. Yet the fact 
remains, CTU and by extension the CTU library are also situated in 
the setting of the United States and formed within the educational 
culture of the USA. This is an inescapable fact and brings with it 
certain assumptions. In the US, colleges, universities, and graduate 
schools like CTU espouse what is commonly known as a “Western 
worldview.” The “Western worldview” is loosely defined by John 
Hobson, a professor of politics and international relations at the 
University of Sheffield, as “a worldview that is centered on Western 
civilization or a biased view that favors it [Western civilization] over 
non-western civilizations. When the term is applied to history, it 
may be used in reference to an apologetic stance towards European 
colonialism and other forms of imperialism” (Hobson 2012, 185). The 
influence and legacy of this view still exists in higher education in 
the United States and is also known as colonialism. In commenting 
on coloniality, Argentinian Walter Mignolo writes, 

“But no matter what it is called, the west was, and still is, the only geo-
historical location that is both part of the classification of the world, and the 
only perspective that has the privilege of possessing dominant categories 
of thoughts from which and where the rest of the world can be described, 
classified, understood, and improved.” (Mignolo 2005, 36)

Indian Biblical scholar R.S. Sugirtharajah writes, “Colonialism is not 
simply a system of economic and military control, but a systematic 
cultural penetration and domination” (Sugirtharajah 1995, 460). 
Some scholars draw distinctions referring to colonialism in the past 
tense as something that happened as European explorers brought 
their culture to other places. Sugirtharajah implies that coloniality 
refers to colonial situations in the present day drawing on Mignolo’s 
words. For the purposes my thesis-project I assumed that both 



36    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

colonialism and coloniality are still active and relevant terms to use 
when discussing the theological library. And despite wanting to be 
diverse and inclusive, CTU was founded and is still geo-historically 
located in the West, specifically the U.S.

One of the services of the theological library as described in 
Standard 6 is to enhance student learning in the classroom. Latino 
theologian and former CTU Academic Dean Gary Riebe-Estrella 
observes:

Few of us would challenge that in too many of our classrooms the learn-
ing/teaching style privileges the values of the Western Enlightenment 
(a term that contains in itself a value judgement on persons and things 
non-Western; that is, they are not enlightened) such as the prizing of the 
individual over the group, individual creativity and initiative over interde-
pendence and collaboration, rational thought over emotional response, 
writing over orality, the universal over the particular. In these cases, as 
with the culture of our schools, the classroom structures and procedures 
that embody these values appear to the dominant group to be both 
normal and normative. Accommodations are seen as concessions. And 
rarely does this underlying value system and its historical and cultural 
contextuality come up for faculty discussion and critique, understand-
ably, though wrongly, so. For it is the value system that produced the 
educational system in which most faculty have been trained and which 
has shaped their understanding and practice of education. That is, it is 
the value system that undergirds their self-understood identity. To chal-
lenge the worldview is not only to introduce change but to threaten the 
fundamental stability of the educational enterprise of which faculty see 
themselves as the center—a challenge that will sometimes be met with 
some technical, though rarely adaptive, change and which almost always 
meets with stiff resistance. (Riebe-Estrella 2009, 23)

While I have heard conversations about adapting teaching styles 
and revamping curriculum to improve learning at CTU, I have never 
heard a conversation either at or outside of a faculty meeting that 
directly addresses coloniality. Likewise, based on the required and 
recommended reading lists each semester, the books do not directly 
address coloniality either. This observation about the classroom from 
Riebe-Estrella holds true for the library as well, in my opinion, and 
again echoes Turner’s comment. Within an institution, academic 
libraries are a vital component, serving two essential roles: sup-
porting the curriculum and assisting faculty and student research. 
Applying Riebe-Estrella’s comments on the classroom to the library, 
it is not difficult to draw out this fact that the very activities of the 
library favor the same privileges of Hobson’s “Western worldview.” 



Papers    37

Because academic libraries do not operate in a vacuum, they mirror 
the institutions they serve, which is not necessarily intentional on 
the part of the library, but something that remains unchallenged.

Thinking about this from a slightly different perspective, Michel 
Andraos, Dean of the Faculty of Theology at St. Paul University, raises 
two timely and interesting questions: “How do we do theological 
education that takes both the issues of diversity and coloniality 
seriously in the globalized seminaries and divinity schools of North 
America?” and “How do we make our educational institutions as a 
whole, a learning and teaching environment that is aware of, respect-
ful, and hospitable to cultural and racial diversity?”(Andraos 2012, 4). 
I think these two questions challenge the theological library to look 
into how the library privileges its place in the academic community 
and is impacted by the values of the Western Enlightenment. If we 
are going to take coloniality seriously as Andraos suggests, then we 
also need to understand a bit about the subtle differences between 
decolonial and postcolonial.

At this point it is important to lay down my understanding of 
the terms decolonial and postcolonial, because these terms were 
key dialog partners in my understanding of how the library does 
knowledge injustice, even unintentionally. Although there were many 
definitions to choose from, I used the work of Claudio Carvalhaes. 
Introducing the book Liturgy in Postcolonial Perspectives, the editor 
Carvalhaes observes:

While both postcolonialism and decolonialism have important theoretical 
differences and some authors will like to use one term over the other, in 
this book the two terms are used interchangeably and so will be assumed 
to be synonymous throughout the book. They are modes of analysis in 
which social, cultural, religious, gendered, sexual, and economic ways of 
living are assessed critically by those who have been victimized by patterns 
of structural domination and have been dismissed from the historical 
processes of life creation: namely, the poor, the disenfranchised, the sub-
altern, the wretched of the earth, and the colonized. (Carvalhaes 2015, 17)

Carvalhaes, a Brazilian who teaches at Union Theological Seminary 
in New York City, adds a footnote to his observation. He writes, 

“In very broad and short strokes, one can say that postcolonialism emerges 
from experiences in the Middle East and Asia, is a critique to Orientalism 
and has been deeply influenced by Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi 
Bhabha. Decolonialism, on the other hand, arises from experiences in 



38    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Latin America and the Caribbean, is a critique against Occidentalism and 
its leading figures have been Anibal Quijano, Enrique Dussel, and Walter 
Mignolo” (Carvalhaes 2015, 17).

While there is always a need to pay attention to language and how 
we speak about something, I think there needs to be some patience 
with the use of terms like decolonial and postcolonial. My goal is not 
to develop a common vocabulary or enforce theoretical differences, 
but let the voices speak for themselves.

Thus the gist of what I was trying to do in my thesis-project was 
to explore how aspects of decoloniality and postcoloniality had an 
effect on the practices of my theological library, so I could better 
serve the research needs of diverse students, including both inter-
national students who are new to Western modes of education, and 
those students—both international and US-born—who have previ-
ous educational experience in the U.S. Because postcolonial theory 
and decolonial theory share many of the same concerns, though 
from different contexts, I wanted to put them in conversation to 
propose steps a library can use to start a process of dismantling cur-
rent colonial practices that might inhibit students from effectively 
undertaking library research.

But where was I going to find a methodology to explore deco-
loniality and postcoloniality in the library? My colleague Carmen 
Nanko-Fernandez stated in the opening paragraphs of her article 
“Held Hostage by Method? Interrupting Pedagogical Assumptions 
Latinamente”:

Did you ever wonder where theological educators come from? What 
networks of multiple-belongings intersect to form and inform those who 
articulate, in the vernacular of their place, the mystery of God and all it 
implies for our relationships with the divine and the whole of creation? 
Do you wish there were an efficient survey tool to assess your location on 
the theological spectrum? …. So who is mapping the coordinates of con-
temporary theologizing, and why does it seem that only some of us bear 
an obligation to socially locate—especially to locate as Other? What are 
the jarring implications of taking seriously transnational and intercultural 
compositions of our churches, classrooms, and scholarly academies? Or 
is the “new normal” disturbingly pointing to the establishment of new 
norms emanating from positions of dominance that are seeking to control 
the inevitable and uncontrollable? (Nanko-Fernandez 2013, 35)



Papers    39

I decided to adapt the work of Asian feminist theologian Kwok Pui-
lan for my methodology and apply it to the library in the mode of 
what Kwok calls postcolonial imagination. In the introduction to 
her book Postcolonial Imagination & Feminist Theology, Kwok lays 
down this challenge: “Even progressive theologians in the United 
States—feminist, liberationist, and racial minorities among them—
who have championed the use of critical categories such as gender, 
class, and race in their works, have not sufficiently addressed the-
ology’s collusion with colonialism in their theoretical frameworks” 
(Kwok 2005, 7). Drawing on her own intellectual history, Kwok 
proposes “three distinct and yet overlapping modes of postcolonial 
imagination: historical, dialogical, and diasporic” (Kwok 2005, 22). 
For Kwok these modes “make a critical contribution to unpacking 
the process of ‘decolonizing the mind’. It illustrates the complexities 
of identity formation of a postcolonial feminist theologian and how 
the experiences of the colonized, the exiled, the immigrant, and the 
diasporic raise new questions for and broaden the horizon of feminist 
theology” (Kwok 2005, 22). I used the modes as a dialogue partner 
to furthers the thesis statement’s goal of looking through decolonial 
and postcolonial lenses. Kwok’s postcolonial imagination refers to “a 
desire, a determination, and a process of disengagement from the 
whole colonial syndrome, which takes many forms and guises” (Kwok 
2005, 2). Kwok adds more nuance to her understanding of the three 
modes when she writes, “As I reflect on my own thinking process 
as an Asian postcolonial feminist theologian, I discern three critical 
movements which are not linear but overlapped and interwoven 
in intricate ways. They are more like motifs in a sonata, sometimes 
recurrent, sometimes disjointed, with one motif dominating at one 
moment, and another resurfacing at another point” (Kwok 2005, 31).

Each of the first three chapters of my DMin take up one of Kwok’s 
critical movements, beginning with historical imagination. To under-
stand the history of my students, I did research with current library 
users and theological library directors, asking them to reflect on 
their experiences. It led to two surveys and some data.

• The first survey gathered data from current CTU 
students, who presumably come to the library.

• A second survey sought to understand the current 
practices of theological librarians who are mem-
bers of Atla. This survey was completed by library 



40    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

directors.
• The third source of data is from the Association of 

Theological Schools (ATS) using the results of the 
Graduating Student Questionnaire (GSQ) for CTU.  

I drew heavily on my own research data for the dialogue with his-
torical imagination since using the GSQ data didn’t really tell me 
anything about how the students used the library. Rather the GSQ 
data just told me more about whether they liked the library or not. 
The totality of the research data from my surveys highlighted in 
some ways how little students knew about library resources and 
how many assumptions library directors made about the students 
using their libraries. Although the research data revealed some 
alignment between the students and the librarians, let’s look at two 
instances where there wasn’t. 

One area of divergence was how students preferred to learn 
about library services and resources versus how librarians pro-
vided instruction for students. There was agreement between both 
groups about online tutorials, but a wide separation around student 
appointments with the librarian. Students didn’t rank appointments 
with a librarian highly, whereas librarians listed appointments as 
their primary way of doing instruction. There may have been some 
ambiguity or confusion in understanding what I meant by appoint-
ments, but the responses made me wonder what the barriers for 
students might be in making an appointment with a librarian. On 
the other hand, there was alignment between the two groups around 
instruction from the librarian for individuals or small groups. The 
survey didn’t ask specifically how the students came to the librarian 
for help, which is something that needs to be explored further in 
future work. Given the range of librarians answering the question 
while all the students came from the same school, I can see where 
the differences lie to some extent because each library director has 
a different student body. But I also wondered if the librarians are 
asking the students what they want instead of making assumptions 
about what students need? It was also hard to pin down the ways 
students learn about a library since this research was done in 2021 
during COVID-19 and many students weren’t coming into the library 
physically. This may have also affected how the librarians answered 
the question from their perspective. Librarians need to do a great 



Papers    41

deal more research on who uses their library and how those users 
come to know about the library beyond just how to use the library.

A second area of data to consider was the response to a question 
about when students want to learn about the library, versus when 
librarians think is the ideal time to teach students about library 
resources. It should be noted that there might be semantic differ-
ences in the way the original question was asked that led to deeper 
differences in the responses, but the contrast in responses was rather 
stark, with almost 82% of the students wanting to learn about the 
library at the beginning of the semester, while only 26% of the library 
directors thought instruction at the beginning of the semester was 
important. Taking seriously the questions raised by Michel Andraos 
mentioned earlier, I don’t think the difference necessarily infers 
any intentional colonial intent on the part of the library directors, 
but rather, has anyone asked students what their preferences are? I 
know that never crossed my mind when I was actively doing library 
instruction. There is much more data to interpret, and I encourage 
you to read chapter one of the DMin to understand the rest of the 
questions I asked. For now, let’s move on to looking at the library.

The second of Kwok’s critical movements is dialogical imagina-
tion. I used this to have a dialog about how librarians do their work. 
Keeping, producing, and providing knowledge were the three essential 
roles I devised for librarians, but each comes with cultural assump-
tions about what should be kept in a library—the types of knowledge 
the library should help produce and the services the library should 
provide (Veldheer 2023, 29). A 2021 marketing report was released 
that listed the top ten academic publishers (Simba 2021).

• Cambridge University Press*
• Cengage Research
• EBSCO Publishing*
• Elsevier
• Informa
• John Wiley & Sons*
• Oxford University Press*
• ProQuest*
• SAGE Publications, Inc.*
• Springer Nation



42    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

The six publishers marked with an asterisk are those I buy from 
routinely and use their electronic products extensively. All of these 
are headquartered in either Western Europe or North America. 
What does this list say about the resources we make available to our 
students and faculty and the potential creep of colonialism, both in 
the structure of the databases and the overall content? Similarly, 
the American Academy of Religion lists on their website that they 
have a partnership with Oxford University Press to produce “quality 
scholarship” and provides a thirty percent discount on these book 
titles to AAR members (AAR 2023).

It remains unknown how AAR defines quality scholarship, but the 
partnership with Oxford isn’t surprising, and highlights Mignolo’s 
observation from above about the reach of the West. This reach 
extends even to the journal titles held by my library. Although repre-
senting a much larger number of publishers from the Global South, 
the almost 250 journal subscriptions and standing orders received 
annually by the CTU library are managed through an arrangement 
between the library and EBSCO Information Services, a company 
based in the U.S. Why does the CTU library use EBSCO? Because 
EBSCO simplifies the journals management process by working 
with each of the publishers, and no matter where the journals are 
published, the CTU library can pay the invoices in U.S. dollars, rather 
than struggle with currency conversions. A library the size of the 
CTU library, with a staff of three librarians, could not offer the depth 
and breadth of journals and other resources that it does, given how 
time-intensive it is to individually track journal and book publish-
ers, without the help of vendors like EBSCO. My question remains: 
if Atla members are so dependent on mostly Western—and by 
extension colonial—providers for the material they supply to their 
libraries, then how can we expect students from different cultures 
to interact with this material? I don’t have an answer other than 
to admit it is much easier to work with information providers who 
speak my language and work in my currency than it is to deal with 
publishers who don’t.

Although Kwok’s postcolonial imagination was always underly-
ing my work, as a methodology, it wasn’t always a good fit. But as I 
was reminded by my faculty colleagues, when you are working on 
something new, everything doesn’t always work the way you want it 
to. In thinking further about where my library gets resources, I was 



Papers    43

taken with this observation from Kwok because I think it gets at the 
issue of who is producing the knowledge we keep in our libraries:

The primary issue concerns the subject who is doing the “dialogical 
imagining.” The subject I had in mind then was very influenced by the 
construction of the Western liberal subject, unrestrained by social and 
historical location, free to create, to think, to mold consciousness, such 
that he or she can shape disparate parts into the “whole.” (Kwok 2002, 66)

I am not sure I ever found the Western liberal subject, but I am fairly 
confident I won’t find it looking only in library resources published 
and produced in the North American context.

Shifting to seeing librarians as providers of knowledge, this rather 
lengthy quote from my thesis distills how I tried to make sense of what 
we as librarians do every day in the library. To understand how we 
were providers of knowledge, I drew on ritual theory, particularly 
because it is these very rituals that provide the structure for how 
we run the library. As librarians, where would we be without our 
circulation policies and our cataloging rules? Could we deal with 
the chaos that might come from developing a more user-friendly 
system than Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress? Can we all agree 
to shelve the journals in alphabetical order?

Behind the scenes, there are systems and principles, rituals if you will, 
that govern how library activities are supposed to operate. Checking out 
and renewing books, getting materials via IShare from other libraries in 
Illinois, logging into online resources, using other libraries outside of CTU, 
navigating the library website, interlibrary loans, course reserves, book 
loan periods, and handling overdue books, are just some of the systems 
the CTU library has in place along with the principles which govern how 
these systems work. These systems and principles cover more than just 
the print materials. E-books also may come with loan periods or other 
restrictions as well. These are common library activities that students 
engage with every day and they take on a ritual aspect much like religious 
rituals in being repetitive and patterned behaviors which as providers of 
knowledge, librarians rely on to literally provide the knowledge. Without 
these systems and rituals, books wouldn’t circulate, electronic resources 
couldn’t be used outside of the library and the operations of the library 
would fall into chaos. (Veldheer 2023, 102–103)

Dialoging with Kwok as a postcolonial theologian is a clarion call 
for librarians, as keepers, producers and providers of information, 
to consider and reconsider where we get our library resources and 



4 4    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

how we interact with those whom our libraries serve. There is always 
more work to do in this regard.

Using Kwok’s approach with diasporic imagination, how do we 
move forward to start the work of addressing colonialism as it exists 
in our libraries. Working with my existing framework of librarians 
as keepers, producers and providers of information, I looked at 
the work of Indigenous Peoples in Canada particularly around the 
creation of their own libraries, such as the one at the University 
of British Columbia that some of us learned about during the Atla 
conference in Vancouver, held in 2019. I think the ways in which the 
First Nations people have developed organizational schemes for their 
collections is worth a much deeper look. They have created systems 
using indigenous languages and cultures to keep their information 
and not just in an archival sense. Having libraries organized around 
indigenous ideals centers the knowledge in ways culturally sensitive 
and familiar to First Nations people. For producers of knowledge, 
I suggest we look at participatory research that allows students to 
participate in producing knowledge using research methods from 
the contexts of our students, instead of always relying on Western 
models. For this I drew on the work of Debra Luna and her work 
with Paulo Freire’s 1970 observation on the “culture of silence.” In 
working with Mexican immigrant families, Luna’s research involved 
trying to determine why some students succeed or don’t succeed in 
American schooling, concluding that what was really lacking was 
the perspective of the very group most affected: the students (Luna 
2002, 8). Luna proposed a model of participatory research based on 
transformative dialogue, which she believes is more than a meth-
odology. Luna’s research echoes in Kwok’s writing about diasporic 
imagination and her experiences of being de-centered and multi-
centered. There is still a great deal to explore and to work out in 
how other cultures might do research, which will drastically change 
how librarians approach research as well. 

Finally, as providers of knowledge, we need to give students 
voice in the research process. Drawing from the work of Gayatri 
Spivak’s writing on the subaltern, “It seems to me that finding the 
subaltern is not so hard, but actually entering into a responsibility 
structure with the subaltern, with responses flowing both ways: 
learning to learn without this quick-fix frenzy of doing good with an 
implicit assumption of cultural supremacy which is legitimized by 



Papers    45

unexamined romanticization, that’s the hard part”(Spivak 1996, 293). 
I have been pondering Spivak’s observation in the library context, 
namely that when students come into the library seeking help, the 
expectation on the part of the librarian is that the student has the 
agency to speak for themselves. But I have come to believe this is 
not the correct assumption. No matter what, there will always be a 
different power dynamic between the librarian and the student even 
if the librarian is trying not to make assumptions about the student. 
I think we need to find ways to set aside some of the assumptions 
we might be making about what students want and let them speak 
for themselves in the research process.

REFERENCES

American Academy of Religion. 2003. “Publications and News.”  
https://aarweb.org/AARMBR/AARMBR/Publications-and-News.aspx.

Andraos, Michel Elias. 2012. “Engaging Diversity in Teaching Religion 
and Theology: An Intercultural, De-Colonial Epistemic Perspective: 
Engaging Diversity.” Teaching Theology & Religion 15 (1): 3–15. 

Catholic Theological Union. 2020. “Mission Statement.” https://ctu.
edu/mission-and-vision-2/.

Carvalhaes, Claudio. 2015.  Liturgy in Postcolonial Perspectives. New 
York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hobson, John. 2012. The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: 
Western International Theory, 1760–2010. New York: Cambridge 
University Press. 

Kwok Pui-lan. 2002. “Historical, Dialogical, and Diasporic Imagination 
in Feminist Studies of Religion.” Journal of the European Society 
of Women in Theological Research 10: 59–79.

Kwok Pui-lan. 2005. Postcolonial Imagination & Feminist Theology. 
Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.  

Lincoln, Timothy D. 2004. “What’s a Seminary Library for?” Theological 
Education 40 (1): 1–10.

https://aarweb.org/AARMBR/AARMBR/Publications-and-News.aspx
https://ctu.edu/mission-and-vision-2/
https://ctu.edu/mission-and-vision-2/


46    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Luna, Debra. 2002. “When ‘Inclusion’ Means Exclusion: A Participatory 
Research Journey into the  Educational Experiences of First 
and Second-Generation Mexican Immigrant Females and Their 
Parents’ Reflections.” EdD diss., University of San Francisco.

Mignolo, Walter D. 2005. The Idea of Latin America. Malden: Blackwell 
Publishing.

Mu, Cuiyang. 2006. “Marketing Academic Library Resources and 
Information Services to International Students.” In Library 
Management and Marketing in a Multicultural World, edited by 
K. G. Saur. The Hague, Netherlands: IFLA, 2006.

Nanko-Fernandez, Carmen. 2013. “Held Hostage by Method? 
Interrupting Pedagogical Assumptions—Latinamente.” Theological 
Education, 48 (1): 35–45.

Riebe-Estrella, Gary. 2009. “Engaging Borders: Lifting up Difference 
and Unmasking Division.” Theological Education 45 (1): 19–26. 

Simba Information. 2021. “Global Social Science & Humanities 
Publishing 2021–2025.”  Simba Information.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1996. “Subaltern Talk: Interview with 
the Editors.” In The Spivak Reader, edited by Donna Landry and 
Gerald MacLean, 287–308. Routledge.

Sugirtharajah, R.S. 1995.  “Afterward: Cultures, Texts, and Margins: A 
Hermeneutical Odyssey.” In Voices from the Margins: Interpreting 
the Bible in the Third World, edited by R. S. Sugirtharajah. London: 
SPCK.

Turner, Decherd, Jr. 1960. “Summary.” Library Trends 9 (2): 281–3.

Veldheer, Kristine J. 2023. “Epistemic Injustice in the Theological 
Library: A Case Study of the Paul Bechtold Library at Catholic 
Theological Union.” DMin diss., Catholic Theological Union.


