​I am a cultural and historical anthropologist of religion. I am especially interested in the many different histories, cultural practices, and social effects of Christianity in the world. My work uses lenses from women's studies and material studies to trace the interplay of bodies, things, spaces, and words in particular social situations.

My first book, Mission Station Christianity (2013), examined how place-making practices on and around new "mission stations" shaped understandings of Christianity, gender, and race in colonial Southern Africa. My current book project has the provisional working title Women and Words in Christianity. It explores the often problematic connection between "women" and "words." I focus on a case study of the so-called "mission feminists" in early-twentieth-century Norway - a group of women who used new language practices (new ways of speaking, listening, reading, and writing) to advocate for women's greater status in Christian organizations, with a variety of contradictory effects. I have also begun a new line of research on reading. 
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I teach at the University of Georgia, where my classes include an introductory class on "religions of the world," and upper-level classes on Christianity around the world, women in Christian history, and women in world religions.
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Contact

Twitter: @IngieHovland 
Email: ingiehovland [at] uga [dot] edu

CV

Hovland CV 2021

Research topics:
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Women and words
in Christianity

What happens when Christian women try to forge new connections between themselves and words, experimenting with new ways of writing, reading, listening, and speaking?
​Setting: The "mission feminists" in Norway during the time of the first-wave women's movement.
Meeting minutes of the Kristiania chapter of the Female Teachers' Mission Association (LMF), 1923
Meeting minutes of the Kristiania chapter of the Female Teachers' Mission Association (LMF), 1923. The Mission Archives, Stavanger.

Mission station Christianity 

How does Christian place-making affect how Christianity is practiced? How does it affect ideas about gendered and racialized bodies within those spaces?
Setting: Norwegian mission stations in Southern Africa during the time of British colonial expansion.
Watercolor of Umpumulo mission station in the Natal Colony by missionary Hans Christian Leisegang, 1866Picture
Watercolor of Umpumulo mission station in the Natal Colony by missionary Hans Christian Leisegang, 1866. The Mission Archives, Stavanger.

Christianity, organization,
​history, gender

How are changing knowledge practices in a Christian institution tied to changing practices of femininity and masculinity?
​Setting: The Norwegian Mission Society (NMS), a 150-year-old Christian non-governmental organization, navigating large changes at the start of the twenty-first century.
Organogram of the NMS main administration. NMS Yearbook 2003.
Organogram of the NMS main administration. NMS Yearbook 2003.

Reading: Subject, scholars, students

How do understandings of reading as a research subject relate to how we use reading as a scholarly method in our work, and how we teach discipline-specific reading to students in our classes at university? In addition to exploring the role that reading plays in my historical case studies and in my own method, I have also begun conducting classroom (SOTL) studies of student reading.
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Excerpt of a student's reading map from the class "Women in Christian History"