In this course, we will consider women’s roles in American religious history, and we will also explore how using gender analysis can influence our understanding of that history. We will also consider how taking women’s religious lives seriously can alter and enrich narratives about American women’s history. We will primarily examine women’s shifting relationships to ideas and institutions within the American Christian tradition, broadly defined, but we will also read and discuss works concerning women’s relationships to and roles within American Judaism, spiritualism, and others. During this course, you will gain an understanding of the overall narrative of American women’s religious history as well as an understanding of the key questions and approaches that characterize the field. More importantly, in the process we will explore many of the underlying, complex questions that are embedded in this topic. What possibilities for self-expression and even empowerment does religion offer to women? What difference does the presence of women make to religious ideas, rituals, and spaces? Why does it matter that we account for gender in religious history? How do we understand and critique the relationship between women and religion when the latter has been a force for both oppression and uplift? How, if at all, is religion compatible with the aims of women’s and gender history, with its emphasis diverse feminist goals? Finally, how does exploring these questions clarify your own values system and approach to religion, women, and gender both historically and in the your contemporary moment? My ultimate hope is that you leave this class not only with new historical skills that enable you to understand how women and gender have interacted with American religion in the past, but also with the ability to engage more effectively with these essential questions in the present.