"The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.
Isaiah 58:11 NRSV
Margaret McManus, Associate Professor of Historical and Theological Studies
Margaret McManus
Associate Professor of Historical and Theological Studies
mmcmanus@absw.edu; (510) 841-1905 X223B.A., Our Lady of the Lake College
M.A., Graduate Theological Union
Ph.D., Graduate Theological Union
Commitment to the ministry of teaching is foundational to my life, beginning with junior high students many years ago and leading in August, 2000, to my faculty appointment at ABSW. During my career as an educator, I have served on high school and college faculties, teaching U.S. History and Religious Studies. I have worked as pastoral staff in a large suburban congregation, developing retreat, youth ministry, adult education, and worship programs. And, I have co-directed two program centers focused on women’s issues/studies in church and society.
At ABSW, I teach in the areas of earliest Christian history and U.S. religious history, emphasizing connections with students’ ministerial contexts. My approach to these studies is multicultural, interdisciplinary, and attentive to issues of gender, race, and class.
Many of my richest experiences have occurred in groups gathered for, and committed to, transformational learning. These experiences have taught me that the process of learning is demanding, complicated, and rather “miraculous.” Guided by this realization, in my teaching I work toward development of a learning community that is genuinely open and intellectually challenging.
Publications/Writing/Presentations
Encyclopedia Articles on: Fanny Jackson Coppin, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Lugenia Burns Hope, National Black Sisters' Conference, Leonora O'Reilly, Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, Sarah Parker Remond, the Sisters of Loretto, Marjorie Tuite in Westminster Dictionary of Women in American Religious History, edited by Susan Hill Lindley (forthcoming).
Book Review: Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828-1860 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002) by Diane Batts Morrow in Church History 74:3 (September, 2005): 646-648.Conference Paper: “An Unlikely Companionship: Vida Scudder and Catherine of Siena” (2005).Dissertation: “‘From Deep Wells of Religious Faith’: An Interpretation of Vida Scudder’s Social Activism, 1887-1912” (1999).