Professor Courtney T. Goto has been teaching at the Boston University School of Theology since 2010. Trained at Emory University, she teaches and makes contributions to research in religious education and practical theology. Goto is a co-Director of the Center for Practical Theology.

Goto’s research addresses the intersections of racism, culture, and faith; as well as aesthetic teaching and learning, creativity, and embodied knowing. Goto’s current project is a collaboration with Chris Schlauch on relating across race. She is author of Taking on Practical Theology: The Idolization of Context and the Hope of Community (Brill, 2018). In this book, she explores the regnant paradigm to which the field of practical theology is captive, reflecting on issues of power and privilege in knowledge production from her perspective as a Japanese American. For this work, she was awarded a Louisville Institute First Book Grant for Minority Scholars. Goto is also author of The Grace of Playing: Pedagogies for Leaning into God’s New Creation (Pickwick, 2016). In this book, she explores how and why grace-filled teaching can be understood in terms of playing, a kind of relating that leads believers to practice being more life-giving possibilities together.