Dr. Amy B. Voorhees

Her fellowship will allow her to contextualize Eddy's narrative within its physical and cultural environment. At the Library, she will study the theology, culture, rhetoric, texts, and habits of New England Congregationalists during the time that Eddy was a member of the Congregational church, from the 1830s through the early 1870s. She will examine the papers of such high-profile adherents as Washington Gladden and Theodore Munger as well as reading church records, sermons, and meeting minutes that provide a first-hand, intimate window into the period.  At the Athenaeum, she will research the religious and cultural climate of Boston at the end of the long nineteenth century, when Eddy's Christian Science church emerged.. She will also study rare books, periodicals, and polemics in the Athenæum's collection.

Dr. Voorhees holds a doctorate in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she specialized in American religious history. She has also earned two Master's degrees, one in Women's Studies from The Ohio State University and one in Church History from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She has published several articles in peer-reviewed scholarly publications, most recently in the journals Church History and the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. She is the recipient of many fellowships and awards, including the 2012 Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award, and has served as a manuscript referee for the Harvard Theological Review. She is currently on the graduate faculty of the White Mountains Institute at Plymouth State University. 

Red Ink: Native Americans Picking Up 

the Pen in the Colonial Period 

  by

Drew Lopenzina  

SUNY Press. 2012 

One of the things I enjoy in my job as Librarian is spending time reading about newly published books that will fit into our collections. Perusing academic publications, I was intrigued by the title "Red Ink." One of my responses was to consider the political correctness of "red" and Native Americans. Looking into the book, I found the "red" did describe the literature of Native Americans AND the red ink used to correct and change the meaning and output of the Natives by the white culture. Red was also the color of  bloodshed in the contacts between Native and other cultures. I will admit I had not considered written records by Native American although I was familiar with the colonial missionary work that taught reading and writing. My thinking was that the tradition was oral and that any Native American literature was about the Natives not by them.

Lopenzia reviews America colonial literature and reports Native Americans were very active writers in the Colonial period and acquired the skill rapidly. This book includes the story of Samson Occom, who learned the western style of writing through the missionary schools and became a Presbyterian minister.   He was the first Native American to publish his writings in English. Occom was a missionary and a teacher and raised a notable amount of money that would fund Dartmouth College. He used his knowledge to protect the Native Americans from predatory land rights deals.