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Laurie Maffly-Kipp

Narrative CV

Laurie Maffly-Kipp has been at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1989. She received her B.A. from Amherst College in English and Religion, and completed the PhD in American History at Yale University (1990). She is now an associate professor in the Religious Studies department and holds a joint appointment in the American Studies Curriculum.

Professor Maffly-Kipp's current research and teaching focuses on African-American religions, religion on the Pacific borderlands of the Americas, and issues of intercultural contact. In Religion and Society in Frontier California (1990) she explored the nature of Protestant spiritual practices in the gold-rush California. In articles on Mormon-Protestant conflicts in the Pacific Islands, African-Americans in Haiti and Africa, and Protestant outreach to Chinese immigrants in California, Professor Maffly-Kipp has analyzed the religious contours of nineteenth-century American life. She is currently completing a second book project entitled African-American Communal Narratives: Religion, Race, and Memory in Nineteenth-Century America.

As part of her interest in recovering historical evidence of African-American religious life, Professor Maffly-Kipp is a consultant to two major documentary projects: African-American Religion: A Documentary History Project , eds. Albert J. Raboteau and David W. Wills, funded by the Lilly Endowment and Pew Charitable Trusts; and The Church in the Southern Black Community (1998/99 Award Winner of The Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition). She serves on the editorial boards for Church History and The North Star: A Journal of African-American Religious History.

Education

  • Ph.D., Yale University, Department of History (1990)
  • M. Phil., Yale University, Department of History (1986)
  • M.A., Yale University, Department of Religious Studies (1985)
  • B.A., Summa cum laude, Amherst College (1982)

Recent Teaching Positions

  • Associate Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1996-present)
  • Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1990-1995)

Recent Honors and Grants

  • Collaborative Project on the History of Christian Practice, Lilly Endowment, Inc. (2001-2005).
  • University Research Council Grant, 2000-2001
  • UNC/IBM General College Curriculum Technology Enhancement Grant, 2000-2001
  • Schwab Fellows Opportunity Grant, Institute for Arts and Humanities, 1998-99, Collaborative Investigator
  • Institute for the Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellowship, UNC Chapel Hill (Spring 1998)
  • W. N. Reynolds Faculty Research Leave, UNC Chapel Hill (Fall 1997)
  • Summer Research Fellowship, Louisville Institute, 1994
  • Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, National Humanities Center, 1993-94
  • NEH Fellowship for University Professors, 1993-94

Selected Publications

  • African-American Communal Narratives: Religion, Race and Memory in Nineteenth Century America, 1780-1910 (under contract, expected completion 2003)
  • Religion and Society in Frontier California, 241 pp. (Yale University Press, 1994)
  • “Redeeming Southern Memory: The Negro Race History,” in W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed., Where Those Memories Grow: History, Memory, and Southern Identity (UNC Press, 2000), pp. 169-189
  • “Haiti and the Serpentine Trail: African Missions and African Americans,” in Dan Bays, Mark Noll, and Grant Wacker, eds., The Missionary Impulse in North America.
  • “Writing our Way into History: Gender, Race, and the Creation of Denominational Identity,” in Margaret Bendroth and Virginia Brereton, eds., Women and Twentieth Century Protestantism (University of Illinois Press, 2003)
  • "'Eastward Ho!' American Religious History from the Perspective of the Pacific Rim," in Retelling American Religious History, edited by Thomas A. Tweed (University of California Press, November 1996), pp. 128-147
  • "Mapping the World, Mapping the Race: The Negro Race History, 1874-1915," Church History 64:4 (December 1995), pp. 610-626
  • Contributing editor, Afro-American Religion: A Documentary History Project, Albert Raboteau and David Wills (General Editors); Laurie Maffly-Kipp and Judith Weisenfeld (Assistant Editors)

Teaching Fields

  • American Religious History
  • African-American Religions
  • Ethnicity and Race in America
  • Religious History of the American West and Pacific Rim
  • Religious Contact and Conflict in the Americas
  • Popular Religious Movements in the United States
  • Mormonism and the American Experience

Professional Organizations

  • American Academy of Religion (Steering Committee for Afro-American History, 1993-1995, co-chair 1995-97; AAR Book Awards Jury, 2000-2003)
  • American Historical Association
  • American Society of Church History (Program Committee, 1992; Council Member, 1994-97, Nominating Committee 1997-98, Program Committee for Spring meeting, 2000 and 2005)
  • Organization of American Historians
  • Western Historical Association
  • Mormon Historical Association

Editorial Boards

  • Scholarly Advisor, The Christian Churches and the Southern Black Community, Digital Documents Project, UNC-Chapel Hill (1998-present)
  • Documenting the American South, Digital Documents Project (1998-present)
  • Church History: A Journal of Christianity and Culture (1997-present)
  • The North Star (on-line journal of African American Religious History) (1997-present)
  • Advisory Board, Oxford Companion to Religion in America