Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and Theologies of the Afterlife

Jennifer McFarlane-Harris is Associate Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Seattle Pacific University. Emily Hamilton-Honey is an Associate Professor of English and Humanities and Co-Chief Diversity Officer at SUNY Canton.

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• IntroductionPART 1: (GOD)MOTHERS OF THEOLOGY: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE AND ELIZBETH STUART PHELPS1. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Christian Scholar? A Touch of Feeling in The Gates AjarBy Brianna Thompson 2. Heaven as a Potential Space: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ Afterlife NovelsBy James A. Godley3. Rewriting Heaven: Salvation and the Afterlife in the Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Elizabeth Stuart PhelpsBy Jennine Gleghorn4. The Archetypal Girl Savior and the Child Theologian: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Little Eva and Martha Finley’s Elsie DinsmoreBy LuElla D’AmicoPART 2: SELF-MADE THEOLOGIES: BLACK WOMEN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS5. "As to the Nature of Uncommon Expressions": Jarena Lee’s Supernatural Worldview in The Life and Religious Experiences of Jarena LeeBy Margaret Lowe6. Conversion and Counter-memory: Jarena Lee, Maria Stewart, and the Spiritual Motherhood of Mary MagdaleneBy Elisabeth McClanahan Harris7. "What Absurdity Next?": The Precarious Pulpits of Zilpha Elaw, Black Woman Evangelist (1820-65)By Kimberly Blockett 8. "Aleaving the World, the Flesh, and the Devil": Spiritual Vision and Celibate Holiness in Rebecca Cox Jackson’s Autobiographical WritingsBy Jennifer McFarlane-Harris PART 3: WOMEN AND UTOPIAN THEOLOGIES9. Discovering the Soul of the New Republic: The Early Fiction of Catherine Maria SedgwickBy Joan Varnum Ferretti 10. "The Family Order of Heaven": Belinda Marden Pratt’s Apology for PolygamyBy Zachary McLeod Hutchins11. Theologies of the Afterlife in Mormon Women’s Late-Nineteenth-Century PoetryBy Amy Easton-Flake 12. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Brook Farm, and the Heaven of AssociationBy Mark Gallagher