Davina C. Lopez

Emilie Grace Briggs (1867-1944), the daughter of infamous biblical scholar Charles Augustus Briggs (1841-1913), was also a biblical scholar and historian of religion. This project uses archival collections to photograph, transcribe, and publish Briggs’s 1920 dissertation, in which she used a religious history approach to examine gendered leadership in early and medieval Christianity. The grant will be used to further work on a critical edition, which will make this neglected work available to a wider audience.

Emilie Grace Briggs (1867-1944), the daughter of infamous biblical scholar and accused heretic Charles Augustus Briggs (1841-1913), is primarily remembered as the editor who completed several of her father's books. She was, however, a scholar in her own right and produced a major monograph on women’s leadership in early Christianity that remains unpublished. This project entails transcribing and publishing Ms. Briggs’s 1910 manuscript as a critical edition, making this work available to a wider audience. An introduction and commentary contextualizes her work in the intellectual history of biblical scholarship and studies of religion, the history of women's contributions to American higher education as biblical scholars and teachers of religion, and American religious history.