The corpus of Quaker women’s history and literature offers one of the most fascinating studies of gender across all centuries and continents. This small group of women pioneers, activists, prophets, and writers has often been at the grassroots of revolutionary movements, fuelling and propelling the way for global, monumental change. The 2018 release of Michele Lise Tarter and Catie Gill’s New Critical Studies on Early Quaker Women, 1650 – 1800 (Oxford University Press) demonstrates the potential for strong, innovative interdisciplinary scholarship on the influence of these women. This project seeks to follow that successful volume and its focus on gender in Quaker studies to gather an interdisciplinary body of writers with a shared interest in reassessing nineteenth-century Quaker women, highlighting new discoveries and interpretations about their literary creation, historical landmarks, and transatlantic movements.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Women and the expansion of Quakerism
- Women’s socio-political positions within Quaker theology and culture
- Women and nineteenth-century religious schism
- Women’s Meetings (as a site of power, autonomy, change)
- Women and Quaker print culture
- Women on the margins of Quakerism (geographic or theological)
- Women and social reform (e.g. abolition, suffrage, prison reform)
- Women and war
- Women and Language
- Women and Prophetic Performance
- Religio-political writings by women, Autobiography and “convincement”
- Dissent and identity studies
- Women, leadership, and networking
- Lesser known Quaker women
- Women Friends’ influence on other religious sects and communities
Please submit proposals of approximately 500 words, along with a curriculum vita, to: Robynne Rogers Healey (robynne.healey@twu.ca) and Carole Dale Spencer (spencca@earlham.edu) by 15 March 2019. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Quaker Religious Thought and Quaker Theological Discussion Group 