Prof. Christopher Evans was Featured Speaker at Frances Willard House Museum Online Event
On Sunday, January 23, Professor of History of Christianity and Methodist Studies Christopher Evans was the featured speaker for the online event “Views: Women, Faith, and Activism” hosted by the Frances Willard House Museum. The event featured a conversation about his upcoming book Do Everything: The Biography of Frances Willard. This biography will be the first new Willard biography in over 35 years, and will be published by Oxford University Press later this year.
“I have been following [the book’s] progress for five years,” said Janet Olson, archivist of the Frances Willard House Museum archives, as she introduced Prof. Evans. “We are glad he has chosen Willard’s motto ‘do everything’ for the title of his book, because he has done everything to present a thorough and multi-faceted assessment of Willard’s life and work. He is the right person for the job, as his credentials show.”
“My book makes a very important contribution in terms of looking at the role of Willard’s faith in relationship to social activism,” Prof. Evans reflected on how his biography builds on the work of other scholars before him. “But the other component I am quite excited about…is the way [my book] casts a new lens on the broader history of women, particularly in the [Women’s Christian Temperance Union].”
The full event can be viewed below. Additional information about the Frances Willard House Museum is available on its website.