Bargaining with Patriarchy for Mormon Women and the Death of an Early Christian Saint
An Introduction to the next two posts
Last spring I had the privilege of teaching 7 brilliant graduate students in my seminar on Women and Religious Authority. In addition to my regular annotated bibliography assignment (students annotate each seminar class day reading and submit as a final course assignment), I have required a blog post assignment for the past few years. You see, I believe that academics need to learn the writing skills necessary for communicating scholarship with a broader public, and so I have started teaching those skills to my students.
Here are the logistics: each student presents a character sketch of a historical figure relevant to the current seminar (for my seminars this is almost always a woman). This usually involves a power point presentation, public speaking, as well as fielding an open Q&A. Additionally, students submit to me an 800-1200 blog-post style essay on their chosen historical figure. I review the blog posts, make suggested edits, and return them for revision. Students (after revising) then share their blogposts with the seminar. I ask the class to reach each of the blog posts and (individually) submit to me their top three favorites. The two students with the most votes get their posts published on my current site (it used to be the Anxious Bench for several years and now it is my substack).
This year I sweetened the pot further by offering a book prize along with the publication opportunity. The overall winner would receive copy of Beth Moore’s memoir All My Knotted-Up Life (which went along quite well with our theme of women and religious authority) and the runner-up would receive a signed copy of my book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood. To my great delight, Beth Moore sent me a signed copy of her book to give as the overall prize.
I hope you enjoy these next two posts as much as I did. I can tell you that all of the blog posts submitted were of high quality, and you may see one or two more appearing in the future, too. Meanwhile, I am off to Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge tomorrow. I can’t wait to tell you about two cemeteries I visited this week, one of which will haunt me for quite a while.
Until then!