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Life in Language

Mission Feminists and the Emergence of a New Protestant Subject

Ingie Hovland

$190.95

Hardback

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English
University of Chicago Press
22 March 2025
A new anthropology of Protestant feminism, anchored by the language experiments of one Lutheran community.

The language of the Bible is a powerful lens through which many Protestants understand themselves and their world, and its prohibitions on women's speech pose complicated challenges to women. Nevertheless, women frequently serve as vocal leaders in Protestant organizations, including the early twentieth-century Norwegian Mission Society. In Life in Language, Ingie Hovland offers a unique biography of Henny Dons, a leader of the society's so-called mission feminists, that grapples with ways Protestant women crafted innovative, expansive self-understandings through Christian language. More than their male peers, the mission feminists turned to religious speech to express material, as well as heavenly, desires for paid work, voting rights, and more, and Hovland argues that these experiments in women speaking, reading, writing, and listening paved the way for a new way of being in the world.
By:  
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 20mm
Weight:   399g
ISBN:   9780226838298
ISBN 10:   0226838293
Series:   Class 200: New Studies in Religion
Pages:   192
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Introduction    Unlearning Protestant Dematerialization Chapter 1        Listening Chapter 2        Speaking Chapter 3        Writing Chapter 4        Reading Conclusion      A Material-Discursive, Multiple Protestantism Acknowledgments Notes References Index  

Ingie Hovland is assistant professor of religion and women’s studies at the University of Georgia and author of Mission Station Christianity: Norwegian Missionaries in Colonial Natal and Zululand, Southern Africa 1850-1890.

Reviews for Life in Language: Mission Feminists and the Emergence of a New Protestant Subject

""Hovland's brilliant book is both a biography and a reflection on the work that language does in making and not just describing lives. The result is an illuminating and important reflection on feminism, materialism, and the multiple ways in which anthropologists must rethink their understandings of the links between Protestantism, interiority, and modernity.""--Simon Coleman, University of Toronto ""Hovland's Life in Language is one of those books that manages to challenge convention through careful attention. In her portrait of Henny Dons, a mission feminist from Norway, Hovland gives us a new way to understand Protestantism as a religious tradition, one in which the body--the material--matters much more than often claimed. A must-read for all serious students of Christianity, gender, language, and things.""--Matthew Engelke, Columbia University


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