Ziegler, Valarie H. 1954-

PERSONAL: Born 1954. Education: Centre College, B.A. (summa cum laude; history and religion), 1976; Yale University, M.Div. (cum laude), 1979; Emory University, Ph.D. (historical theology), 1987.

ADDRESSES: Office—P.O. Box 37, 313 South Locust St., DePauw University, Greencastle, IN 46135-0037. E-mail—vziegler@depauw.edu.

CAREER: Reinhardt College, Waleska, GA, assistant professor of religious studies, 1979-81; Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, associate professor of religious studies, 1985-95; DePauw University, Greencastle, IN, professor of religious studies, 1995-.

MEMBER: American Academy of Religion, American Historical Association, Society of Biblical Literature.

AWARDS, HONORS: Tew Prize for academic excellence, Yale University; Trinity Prize, 2002, for Diva Julia: The Public Romance and Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe.

WRITINGS:

The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America ("Religion in North America" series), Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1992, published with a new preface by Ziegler, Mercer University Press (Macon, GA), 2001.

(Editor, with Kristen E. Kvam and Linda S. Schearing) Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1999.

Diva Julia: The Public Romance and Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe, Trinity Press International (Harrisburg, PA), 2003.

Contributor to books, including Nonviolent America: History through the Eyes of Peace, edited by James C. Juhnke and Louise Hawkley, Bethel College, 1993; The Dictionary of Feminist Theologies, edited by Letty Russell and Shannon Clarkson, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville, KY), 1996; and An Encyclopedia of Nonviolent Action, edited by Roger Powers, William Vogele, and others, Garland Press (New York, NY), 1996. Contributor to periodicals, including Mennonite Quarterly Review, Christian, Modern Churchman, Journal of Presbyterian History, and Journal of Church and State; reviewer for periodicals, including Shofar, American Historical Review, Commercial Appeal, Christian Century, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; reviewer for presses, including the Oxford University Press and University of Tennessee Press.

SIDELIGHTS: Religious studies scholar Valarie H. Ziegler has written a number of books, beginning with her The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America, a study of the early peace and antislavery movement and two major influences that defined it. The first is the American Peace Society (APS), founded in 1828 by moderate and radical factions and first represented by Noah Worcester and David Low Dodge. The APS attempted to influence government and institutions and educate Christians on the importance of achieving peaceful solutions to the nation's and the world's problems. The second is the campaign of the 1830s waged by the followers of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who founded the New England Non-Resistance Society. This group chose not to work through government, instead calling upon Americans to act independently of established power in order to follow Christ's teachings.

Ziegler follows both groups through the early days of abolitionism, war with Mexico, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and the secessionist crisis. Reviews in American History contributor Geoffrey S. Smith wrote that in The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America, Ziegler "reminds us that American peace work had a decidedly domestic inception. Her analysis of the early debate on peace strategy and tactics also underlies anew the importance of religion as a force in American history and culture—not merely as a means by which groups and individuals enrich themselves as they stave off social alteration, but as a primal method to secure fundamental change—at once regenerative and transformative." Rick Nutt wrote in Church History that Ziegler "has produced a significant contribution to the growing literature on peace history. We learn about some little-known people of the early national period and deepen what we do know of those who are more familiar. Even more, we have a better understanding of what motivated them to stand over against the prevailing just war tradition…. In a time when the problem of war remains vividly alive, this is an important story to understand."

Ziegler also coedited Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender, a study of interpretations of the Adam and Eve story within several religions. Included are readings from the Middle Ages and the writings of Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers that study Eve and the role of women. Also included are writings that demonstrate how the story was interpreted by nineteenth-century movements, such as the Christian Scientists and Shakers. The final chapter, which includes writings from twentieth-century Christians, Muslims, and Jews, reveals that the debate about the meaning of Genesis is hardly over. A Publishers Weekly contributor concluded that the editors of this volume "have performed a great service in making widely available a documentary history of the interpretation of the Eve and Adam story."

Diva Julia: The Public Romance and Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe is Ziegler's biography of Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), the writer, poet, philosopher, playwright, and political activist who also wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and established Mother's Day for Peace, which became simply Mother's Day. Howe's life is documented with the help of papers provided to Ziegler by one of Howe's four daughters, Laura E. Richards. Ziegler organizes her book around themes in five long chapters. She writes that Julia Ward, the extremely talented daughter of a wealthy banker, used writing as an emotional outlet. She married physician and reformer Samuel "Chev" Gridley Howe in 1843, agreeing to limit her life in the service of her husband, children, and home. Her cold and distant husband did not fill the void in her life, however, and she turned to books and writing. Their marriage was fraught with argument and adultery and demands of divorce by him, the consequences of which fell upon their children.

Howe's authoritarian husband suppressed his wife's creativity as much as her father had, and he was furious when he discovered that she was the author of Passion-Flowers, a book of poems published in 1853. Soon after, Howe published two plays under her own name. In 1862 the Atlantic Monthly published her poem that could be sung to the Civil War song "John Brown's Body" and which endeared her to the North. Against her husband's wishes, the now-famous Howe joined the Boston Radical Club and founded a literary magazine. She was a cofounder of the New England Woman's Club and began to lean toward women's suffrage. It was in 1868, when she heard orator Lucy Stone, that Howe became fully converted to women's rights. She became a significant catalyst in the women's movement, cofounding the Women's Suffrage Association and the Women's Journal with Stone. She refuted the theory of Dr. E. H. Clarke, who contended that higher education harms a woman's capacity for reproduction, with a collection of essays titled Sex and Education, and continued with her lectures and writings. She and her husband reconciled just before his death in 1876.

"The great strength of the book is Ziegler's portrait of the marriage, or rather Howe's experience of it," wrote Louise W. Knight in Women's Review of Books. "This is detailed and compelling. The author quotes repeatedly from Howe's diaries, letters, and poems to convey Chev's efforts to control his wife and her suffering under his domination…. Julia's struggles with self-doubt and her later self-assertions are vividly portrayed."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Church History, December, 2003, Rick Nutt, review of The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America, p. 904.

Interpretation, April, 2000, Michael E. Stone, review of Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender, p. 206.

New York Times Book Review, April 11, 2004, Sherie Posesorski, review of Diva Julia: The Public Romance and Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, February 22, 1999, review of Eve and Adam, p. 83; September 1, 2003, review of Diva Julia, p. 78.

Reviews in American History, September, 1993, Geoffrey S. Smith, review of The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America, p. 520.

Women's Review of Books, May, 2004, Louise W. Knight, review of Diva Julia, p. 9.