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Women Called to Witness, by Nancy Hardesty
Women Called to Witness: Evangelical Feminism in the Nineteenth Century is a recovery project of the history of women’s involvement and struggle for equality in the evangelical movement. It is an introductory text to the 19th century that focuses particularly on the religious actions of women.
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The Religious World of Antislavery Women, by Anna Speicher
The Religious World of Antislavery Women: Spirituality in the Lives of Five Abolitionist Lecturers is a group biography of Sarah and Angelina Gimké, Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelly Foster, and Sallie Holley. These five women, who actively lectured and agitated for abolition during the mid-1800s, have a complicated religious history that is often presented in overly-simplified fashions by historians interested in questions of the women’s rights and suffrage or abolition. Speicher sets out to retell their history by highlighting how religion played a central role in the careers of each, both in motivating their activities and in shaping their interpretation of the world and their place it in.
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Reflections on Quakers and Antebellum Reform
This weeks readings focused largely on the religious world of the women who engaged in abolition, temperance, and women’s rights movements during the early part of the nineteenth century.
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Sandra Stanley Holton, Quaker Women
Quaker Women: Personal Life, Memory and Radicalism in the Lives of Women Friends, 1780 – 1930 is a study of the Priestman and Bright extended families, made possible by the study of the correspondence and religious journals of the women of these interconnected families. The family network of those studied stretched from England to the United States and the record of the family shows how the relationship between religious practice, social norms, and political goals changed over time.
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Cosmos Crumbling, by Robert H. Abzug
In Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination, Robert Abzug looks at evangelical reform efforts, particularly Temperance, Sabbatarianism, and the incorporation of manual labor into seminary education, as well as “radical” reform causes of abolition, “body reforms” or various health and healing movements, and women’s rights and suffrage. In all of these he focuses on how reform fit into the cosmological beliefs of the reformers, with much of the effort focusing on bringing about the necessary purity to usher in the coming millennium.
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Beginning the Minor Field Readings
This semester I am doing an minor field on religion in 19th century America. I am super excited to be focusing on my content area of choice! In addition to the general greatness of religion in the 19th century, the readings I am doing with the amazing Sharon Leon are focused on religious women. While we will be addressing the major themes of the period, the goal is to intentionally shift the focus to the religious worlds experienced, promoted, and constructed by women.
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New Semester, New Course, New Adventures
As part of History 698, currently named “Programming for Historians,” we are creating tutorials for programminghistorian.org. I will be posting my tutorials here, along with reflections on the process of applying data manipulation to historical investigation.
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remembering the humanities in digital humanities
I was asked a question recently that I wasn’t expecting. I was asked by a ruby developer what could be learned from the past. It was a sincere question. But I realized when he asked it that I generally assume the value of historical inquiry. I assume that you can learn a lot from the past, it just depends on what questions you ask.
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Hist 697: Backing away…
I have hit the point when perfectionism becomes counter-productive and so am declaring my final project done.
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Hist 697: Design is up.
My design assignment is live. There is a brief description to provide some context as part of the page, but the gist is that the design is to go over a wordpress installation. As such, many of the links and the search do not work yet! Mea Culpa.