Women and Words in Christianity
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The picture to the right shows Henrike "Henny" Dons. She was one of several women who advocated for greater status for women in Christian organizations in Norway, especially in Christian mission organizations, in the early twentieth century. This was the time of the first-wave women's movement in Scandinavia, and Henny Dons and others have later been thought of as the "mission feminists." I am particularly interested in the fact that in this picture, she is casually holding a notebook. In my research on the "mission feminists" I have been struck by how tightly intertwined their new thinking about women was with new language practices. The women seem to me to have carried out experiments with new ways of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The connection between women and words has often been problematic in the history of Christianity. What happens when women try to forge new connections between themselves and words within Christian institutions? A book manuscript is still in the works. For now, some articles are about to come out of this research project, and I will post links to them below when they are published. |
Photograph of Henrike Margrethe "Henny" Dons, date unknown, shared on the genealogical research website MyHeritage.
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Listening"An Ethics of Response: Protestant Christians' Relation with God and Elsewheres," in
Religion & Society (2020). Download PDF 
Front page of the mission periodical Norsk Missionstidende (Norwegian Mission Tidings), 1910, showing "the call."
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Reading"Reconnecting Language and Materiality in Christian Reading: A Comparative Analysis of Two Groups of Protestant Women," with Britt Halvorson, in Comparative Studies in Society & History (2021).
Download PDF 
The biblical account of Mary and Martha (Luke 10, 38-42) in the 1904 translation by the Norwegian Bible Society.
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Writing... ... ...
Bolette Gjør, first editor of the women's magazine Missionslæsning for Kvindeforeninger (Mission Reading for Women's Groups), started in 1884.
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