Curriculum Vitae

Jennifer Graber

  • The College of Wooster
  • Department of Religious Studies
  • Wooster, Ohio 44691
  • 330.263.2306 / jegraber@wooster.edu

Employment (top)

  • Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, The College of Wooster, Fall 2006 to present

Education (top)

Duke University, Graduate Program in Religion, Durham, NC

  • Ph.D. American Religious History, May 2006
  • Dissertation: “Christianity Imprisoned: Religion and the Making of the Penitentiary, 1797-1860.” Director: Grant Wacker; Committee: Thomas Tweed, Stanley Hauerwas, Philip Gura, and Julie Byrne

Candler School of Theology at Emory University, Atlanta, GA

  • Master of Theological Studies, magna cum laude, 1999

Goshen College, Goshen, IN

  • Bachelor of Arts in Music, GPA 3.96, 1995

Grants, Honors, and Awards (top)

  • Research Grant, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University (2011-2012)
  • Luce Fund for Distinguished Scholarship Research Award, The College of Wooster (2011)
  • Young Scholars in American Religion, Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (2009-2011)
  • Luce Fund for Distinguished Scholarship Research Award, The College of Wooster (2009)
  • Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Fellowship (2005)
  • Anne Firor Scott Research Award, History Department, Duke University (2005)
  • Duke University Summer Research Fellowship (2005)
  • Day Dissertation Fellowship, Center for the Study of Philanthropy and Voluntarism, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University (2004)
  • Woodruff Fellow for Theology and Ministry, Candler School of Theology at Emory University (1996-1998)
  • International Society of Theta Phi, Candler School of Theology at Emory University (1999)

Teaching Experience (top)

The College of Wooster:

  • American Religious Communities
  • Native American Religions and Cultures
  • Global Catholicism in America
  • Junior Independent Study (Theories in Religious Studies)
  • From Genesis to Dianetics: America’s Holy Books
  • Asian Religions in America (co-taught)
  • The European Reformations

University of North Carolina Greensboro (Spring 2004):

  • History of Christianity: Reformation to the Present

Publications: Books (top)

  • The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America, The University of North Carolina Press, 2011

Publications: Articles (top)

  • “The Great Indian Pentecost: Providential Revisions and the Taking of the American West,” in Apocalypse and the Millennium: Providential Religion in the Era of the Civil War, Louisiana State University Press, forthcoming late 2011 or early 2012 [Reprint of Church History article]
  • “A Mighty Upheaval on the Minnesota Frontier: Violence, War, and Death in Dakota and Missionary Christianity,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 80:1 (March 2011): 76-108.
  • “Social Reform,” 10,000-word anchor essay in The Encyclopedia of Religion in America, edited by Peter Williams and Charles Lippy, CQ Press, June 2010
  • “When Friends Had the Management It Was Entirely Different”: Quakers and Calvinists in the Making of New York Prison Discipline, Quaker History 97:2 (Fall 2008): 19-40
  • “Henry Purcell,” “Ira D. Sankey,” and “Church World Service,” Encyclopedia of Protestantism, ed. Hans Hillerbrand, Routledge Press, December 2003
  • “Mennonites, Gender, and the Bible in the 1920s and 30s,” Conrad Grebel Review, Spring 2003

Conference Presentations (top)

  • “The Indians Have No West Point: Missionaries to the Lakota and the Meanings of Frontier Violence,” American Society of Church History meeting, Chicago, January 2012
  • “Between Two Worlds: Kiowa Ledger Art and Cultural Catastrophe,” American Academy of Religion meeting, San Fransisco, November 2011
  • “‘You Shall Live, You Shall Live’: Religious Transformation and the Massacre at Wounded Knee,” Bloody Days: Massacres in Comparative Perspective conference, McNeil Center for Early American History, Philadelphia, June 2011
  • “War and the Interpretation of Sacred Narratives,” American Historical Association meeting, Boston, January 2011.
  • “The Question of Suffering: Debating Religion in the American Prison,” American Historical Association meeting, Boston, January 2011.
  • “The Great Indian Pentecost: Providential Revisions, Indian Evangelization, and the Taking of the American West,” Millennialism and Providentialism in the Era of the American Civil War, Rice University, Houston, Texas, October 2010.
  • “To Improve the Soul or Betray the Nation’s Faith?: Inmate Reponses to Prison Theologies of Redemptive Suffering,” Society of Historians of the Early American Republic meeting, Rochester, New York, July 2010.
  • “Performance at the Gallows: Power, Loss, and Dakota Christianity,” American Society of Church History annual meeting, San Diego, January 2010.
  • “Memorials on the Move: Theorizing the Mankato 38 + 2,” American Academy of Religion meeting, Montreal, November 2009.
  • “The Furnace of Affliction: The Quest for Suffering Without Violence in Early American Prisons,” Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture’s Religion and Violence in Early America conference, Yale University, April 2008.
  • “Reconsidering the Nation’s Altars: Harry Stout’s Upon the Altar of the Nation,” American Society of Church History meeting, Washington, DC, January 2008.
  • “Philadelphia and Beyond: The Fate of Quaker Prison Ideas in the New Republic,” American Society of Church History meeting, Philadelphia, January 2006.
  • “What’s So Radical About Trans-Atlantic Radical Protestantism?” American Society of Church History meeting, Savannah, GA, April 2005.
  • “Discipline, Not Punish: American Christians and the Penitentiary,” Southeastern Commission on the Study of Religion meeting, Winston-Salem, March 2005.
  • “Maud Ballington Booth: The Little Mother and Her Boys in Prison,” American Society of Church History meeting, Washington, DC, January 2004.
  • “Pax Christi, Pacifism, and the New Catholic Landscape of Richmond, Virginia,” American Academy of Religion meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, November 2003.
  • “Vincent Harding and the New Civil Rights Historiography,” American Academy of Religion meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, November 2003.

Invited Lectures (top)

  • “Who Sins? Who Suffers? Religion in the Making of America’s First Prisons,” Faculty Research Luncheon, The College of Wooster, February 2008.
  • “Citizen-Saints and Criminal-Sinners: Religion in the Making of America’s First Prisons,” Religious Studies Program, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA, April 2006.
  • “Religion and the Antebellum Prison,” Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, VA, April 2006
  • “Fires of Reform: Movements in Antebellum America,” Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA, November 2005.
  • “The Rise of the Religious Right,” Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA, November 2005.
  • “The ‘Free’ Churches in the Twentieth Century,” Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC, October 2004
  • “Antebellum African American Religious Traditions,” Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC, February 2003

Publications: Book Reviews (top)

  • Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War by Jonathan H. Ebel – Religious Studies Review, forthcoming.
  • Setting Down the Sacred Past: African American Race Histories by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp – Religious Studies Review, forthcoming.
  • Good Punishment?: Christian Moral Practice and U.S. Imprisonment by James Samuel Logan – Mennonite Quarterly Review 84:1 (January 2010): 171-173.
  • Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan – International Review of Modern Sociology 35:2 (Autumn 2009): 346-348.
  • Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War by James O. Lehman and Steven M. Nolt – Mennonite Quarterly Review 83:1 (January 2009): 166-169.
  • Prophets of the Great Spirit: Native American Revitalization Movements in Eastern North America by Alfred A. Cave – Religious Studies Review 34:2 (June 2008): 120.
  • A Seat at the Table: Huston Smith in Conversation with Native Americans on Religious Freedom by Phil Cousineau – Religious Studies Review 34:2 (June 2008): 120-21.
  • Orestes Brownson and the Problem of Revelation: The Protestant Years by Arie J. Griffioen in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56:2 (April 2005): 403-404.

Professional Activities and Affiliations (top)

  • Editorial board, Fides et Historia (2010-2012)
  • Outsider reader, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
  • Committee Service at the College of Wooster: Financial Advisory (2010-11), Academic Standards (2008-09), Cultural Events (2007-08), Forum 2008 (2007), Azimuth (2006-09), South Asian Religions position search (2008-09), Sustainable Food (2008-09)
  • Academic blog contributor, Imagined Prisons (www.imaginedprisons.org), History News Network (www.hnn.us)
  • Member of the American Academy of Religion, American Society of Church History, American Historical Association

Updated: November 2011

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