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Re: SAA 2001 Session Proposal - late call



Proposal: Archives of Women in Theological Scholarship


We at Union Theological Seminary have undertaken a documentation strategy project in which we are collecting the papers of prominent women theologians, scholars of religion, and churchwomen. I would be most interested in participating in a panel discussion on documentation strategy using our project as a case study. I'll quote from the summary of our NEH grant proposal to give you an idea of the premise and activities of our project:

PROJECT SUMMARY



Purpose and goals of the Project: The Burke Library of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York requests a grant of $ 167,387 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the implementation of the Archives of Women in Theological Scholarship (AWTS). This grant will supplement the award of $79,325 for eighteen months? of work made to the project in May 2000 by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The goals of this NEH grant will be
to survey and transfer to the Burke Library Archives the archival collections of 25 women in theological scholarship or religious studies and associated organizations or institutions;

to arrange and describe these collections, creating 25 new MARC:amc records, uploading them into RLIN, and posting the 25 new records in EAD format to the UTS WWW site (please refer to { HYPERLINK "http://www.uts.columbia.edu/projects/AWTS/index.html" } );

to promote awareness of this special collection through exhibits, public presentations, LISTSERVs, and the World Wide Web.


Significance: The primary purpose of the AWTS Project is to provide access to the scholarly and personal papers of prominent women who have reshaped the disciplines of theological education1 1 The disciplines of theological education and the study of theology generally include, but are not necessarily limited to, biblical studies, church history, systematic theology, practical theology, Christian ethics, philosophy of religion, ecumenical studies, sociology of religion, pastoral psychology, and religious education.
and influenced the course of American church life during the past thirty years. More than half of these women have been associated with Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York at some point during their professional lives. Related secondary materials from organizations documenting the development of scholarly work by women within the disciplines of theology and religious studies since the late 1960s will also be acquired as resources permit. The collections of the AWTS will provide unprecedented insight into a time in American religious history when women scholars began to have a significant impact on the Academy, the church, and society. Together, they form a critical and unique segment of the United States?s broader intellectual history and are of value not only to the study of theology and religion, but to future research in a broad range of humanities and social science disciplines.

Plan of work and products to be completed: This grant will cover the costs of the second and third funded years of the AWTS documentation strategy project, funding a Processing Archivist's salary; selected project equipment and supplies; and selected travel costs. Under the direction of Project Director Claire McCurdy, the Processing Archivist will arrange, describe, and make available this special collection to the scholarly and general publics via 25 new finding aids (in addition to the 25 produced in the previous funding year), 25 MARC:amc records uploaded to RLIN and 25 EAD-format records posted on the UTS WWW site. The total collection before processing will comprise 250 cubic feet (c.f.), assuming that each donor will transfer to the AWTS approximately ten c.f.. Processing of the records should be completed over a period of 18 months without difficulty if the records are in reasonably good order and processing proceeds at an estimated rate of 10 hours per cubic foot of records. Products completed by the end of the grant period, in addition to 25 RLIN records and 25 EAD-format finding aids, will include scholarly articles and press releases; presentations at meetings and conferences; WWW pages, including at least two virtual exhibits; and announcements in on-line discussion groups.

There is a sense of urgency surrounding the AWTS Project. Two Union faculty members recognized world wide for reformulating their theological disciplines from feminist perspectives have departed from the faculty: Old Testament scholar Phyllis Trible (1998) and Christian ethicist Beverly Wildung Harrison (1999). Several other highly influential women who are or have been on the Union faculty are expected to retire soon: womanist22 Womanist is a term used mainly in theological circles by African-American women. It was coined by Alice Walker, and is defined as ?from ?womanish.? A black feminist or a feminist of color...womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.? See Walker, In Search of Our Mother?s Gardens: Womanist Prose (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), p. xi. A mujerista is a term specific to Hispanic women?s liberation theology and was first put into wide usage by Ada-Maria Isasi-Diaz. See her book En La Lucha/In the Struggle: Elaborating a Mujerista Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993) for an elaboration of this term. theologian Delores Williams and psychologist Ann Belford Ulanov (both Union faculty) as well as senior faculty now teaching at other institutions, such as theologian and biblical scholar Letty Russell, theologian and priest Carter Heyward, and church historian Elizabeth Clark. If we are to preserve their unique legacies, the time to act is now.
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