Religion and the Culture of Print in America:

Authors, publishers, readers and more since 1876
September 10-11, 2004 

Friday, September 10

8-8:30 a.m. Registration

8:30 a.m.

Welcome

James P. Danky, Director, Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America

Keynote I - "From the King James Bible to the Book of Mormon: Religion and Print Culture in Early America"

Keynote II - "From Tracts to Mass-Market Paperbacks: Religion and Print Culture from the Early National Era to the Present." 

10-10:30 Coffee break

10:30 - noon Concurrent panels

Panel 1 – The Business of Religious Publishing

• “Ethnic and Ecumenical: Augsburg Publishing House and the Role of Church Publisher” Kristin Risley, University of Wisconsin-Stout
  
• “Sold on Orphans: Father Baker & the Victoria Press’s Fundraising Strategies, 1888-1975” Heather Hartel, University of Iowa
  

Panel 2 – Religious Publications and Their Readers

• “Mass-Market Books and a New Spirituality: The Readers of Fosdick, Liebman, and Merton” Matthew Hedstrom, University of Texas-Austin
  
• “The Religious Book Club: Print Culture, Consumerism, and the Spiritual Life of American Protestants Between the Wars” Erin Smith, University of Texas-Dallas
  

• Chair: Stephen Vaughn, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  
• Commentator: Howard Schweber, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  

12 - 1 Lunch in Pyle Center Dining Room

1:15 - 2:45 Concurrent panels

Panel 3 – Comics and Newspapers as Theological Texts

• “Sunday Newspapers and Lived Religion in Late-Nineteenth-Century America” Jeffery Smith, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  
• “The Sandman Revolution: Comics and Spiritual Experimentation” Ashley Ruth Lierman, Drew University
  
• “A Theological Interpretation of the Literary Space of the Comic Book Genre” Christopher D. Rodkey, Drew University
  

• Chair: Mary Layoun, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  
• Commentator: Robert Glenn Howard, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  

• “ ‘A Publication for the good of the Cause’: Mary Baker Eddy and the Founding of The Christian Science Journal and the Christian Science Sentinel” Sherry Darling, The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity
  
• “Making Doctors and Nurses for Jesus: Medical Missionary Stories and American Children” Rennie Schoepflin, La Sierra University
  
• “ Healing Words: Reading Narratives of Divine Healing in Kathryn Kuhlman Meetings, 1947-1976” Candy Gunther Brown, St. Louis University
  

• Chair: Robert C. Fuller, Bradley University
  
• Commentator: Ronald L. Numbers, University of Wisconsin-Madison 
  

2:45 - 3:15 Refreshment break

3:15 - 4:45 Concurrent panels

Panel 5 – Print and the Construction of Religious Communities

• “Joseph B. Keeler: Print Culture and the Modernization of Mormonism, 1885-1910” David J. Whittaker, Brigham Young University
  
• “The Select Few: The Megiddo Message and the Building of a Community” Gari-Anne Patzwald, Fuller Theological Seminary
  
• “Creating Fundamentalist Community: The Pilot and its Readers, 1925-1945” William Trollinger, University of Dayton
  

• Chair: Tony Michels, University of Wisconsin-Madison 
  
• Commentator: Peter J. Thuesen, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis
  

• “A Cross to Bear: Jewish Identity in the Debate About the Minnesota Centennial Emblem” Karen Faster, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  
• “A National Moral Crisis: Religious Periodicals and the Watergate Scandal” David Settje, Concordia University-River Forest
  

• Chair: John Milton Cooper, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  
• Commentator: Robert Booth Fowler, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  

5:00 p.m.

"Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Preserving: Collecting African American Religious History": A special PowerPoint slide presentation and reception

Randall K. Burkett, Curator of African American Collections, Special Collections and Archives Division, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University

Saturday, September 11

Panel 7 – Print and the Construction of Religious, Ethnic, and Racial Identity

• “Patterns of Reconstructionist Jewish Practice in the Wisconsin Hillel Review, 1931-1942” Jonathan Z. S. Pollack, Madison Area Technical College
  
• “Religious Books in Nashville’s Negro Public Library, 1916-1927” Cheryl Knott Malone, University of Arizona
  
• “Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in Early American Fiction” James Ryan, Auburn University
  

• Chair: Wayne Wiegand, Florida State University 
  
• Commentator: Nellie Y. McKay, University of Wisconsin-Madison 
  

• “The Radical, The Index, and the Fate of American Liberal Religion” David Robinson, Oregon State University
  
• “Religious Pamphlets by Leading Scientists in the Scopes Era” Edward B. Davis, Messiah College
  
• “ ‘Reading’: Practice and Advice in the 1890s Christian Register” Ingrid Satelmajer, University of Maryland, College Park
  

• Chair: Michael A. Schuler, First Unitarian Society of Madison
  
• Commentator: Paul Conkin, Vanderbilt University
  

10 - 11:30 Concurrent panels

Panel 9 – Scriptures and Popular Religion

• “ ‘Perpetually in the Hands of the People’: The King James Bible and Late Nineteenth-century American Culture” Richard Bademan, Princeton University
  
• “Revolve-ing Notions of the Culturally Relevant Bible” Paul Gutjahr, Indiana University
  
• “You Are What You Wear:  The 1920 Book of Mormon, Historical Criticism, and Anthropology" Sara Patterson, Claremont Graduate University
  

• Chair/Commentator: Charles Cohen, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  

• “ ‘Secret, Persevering, and Importunate’: Prayer and the Public Sphere in Nineteenth-Century America” Linda Frost, University of Alabama at Birmingham
  
• "Popular Religion, the Rise of Interiority, and the Transformation of U.S. Catholic Piety, 1865-1845" James P. McCartin, Seton Hall University
  
• “Antebellum African American Book Concerns: The AME Church and the Afro-Protestant
  Press” Frances Smith Foster, Emory University
  

• Chair: Judith Wimmer, Edgewood College
  
• Commentator: Catherine Brekus, University of Chicago 
  

11:30 - 1 Concurrent panels

Panel 11 – Disseminating Popular Religion

• “The Quiet Crusade: Moody Literature mission, 1889-1980” Adam Laats, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  
• “A Daily Reminder: The Evolution of the Scripture Text Calendar” William Kostlevy, Fuller Theological Seminary
  

• Chair: Bruce Evensen, De Paul University
  
• Commentator: Bradley Longfield, University of Dubuque
  

• "Imagining Satan: Modern Christian Right Popular Culture as an Apocalyptic Masterframe" 
  Brenda E. Brasher University of Aberdeen, Scotland and Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates 
• “Reading the Gendered Rise of the ‘New Age’ Bestseller” Karlyn Crowley, St. Norbert College
  

• Chair: Claire Badaracco, Marquette University
  
• Commentator: Paul Boyer, University of Wisconsin-Madison