This page provides a chronological narrative of the scholarly work I’ve done since coming to ACU.  If you would like to see a simpler run-down of publications and presentations without the narrative format and documentation, navigate to the CV section.

I spent most of my first year of scholarly activity at ACU figuring out the complex and delightful world of academic conferences.   Before I came to ACU in 2010, I had presented twice at the Christian Scholars Conference and twice at smaller regional conferences.  The Christian Scholars Conference experiences were wonderful–in fact, I believe I owe my job in part to meeting Greg Straughn at the 2009 CSC when I was still a PhD student–, but they did not completely prepare me for full participation in academic convention life.  I had never put together a panel or submitted a paper to a national conference before, and I wasn’t sure quite how to go about it.  For guidance in this area, I am much indebted to Dr. Fred Bailey, who was History Department Chair when I arrived, and who essentially pestered me until I had submitted papers or put panels together for multiple regional and national meetings.  This work resulted in the acceptance of two papers in the spring of 2011.

In February 2011, I spoke at the International Conference on Religion and Spirituality in Society in Chicago.  See email Religion in Society Conference 2011.  The paper, a revamped portion of one of my dissertation chapters, was entitled “Indian Responses to Christian Missions in Bengal, 1795-1850,” and it was well received by a kind, if small, audience who asked intelligent questions.  The ICRSS was so large and so broad that I met no one else who was studying nineteenth-century British Baptist missions, but it was a good first big conference experience, and I was grateful to receive Professional Development funds from the College of Arts and Sciences in support of it (see 2010_Prof. Devel. Fund Request_Elliott and 2010_Prof. Devel. Fund Approval_Elliott).

In April 2011, I went to the spring meeting of the American Society of Church History in Grand Rapids, and it was a completely different experience from the International Conference on Religion and Spirituality in Society.  A fairly small gathering of scholars who, for the most part, knew each other well, the ASCH meeting opened my eyes to the fun of narrowly focused panels and conferences where we all speak the same scholarly language and have read many of the same books.  I also made friends and connections there that have been important stepping stones to other conferences and invited presentations since.  I also met people who will be likely reviewers or dust-jacket blurb writers on my book.  So this was a very valuable conference in terms of networking and really getting into the community of my own scholarly field.  The paper I presented there examined the role of providence in Baptist readings of their failures and successes in the mission field.  My paper abstract is here:  ASCH_abstract_Elliott. The full panel proposal that I put together included myself, a PhD student at Baylor named Kyle Welty, and Bill Barnhart, a professor at Caldwell College in New Jersey, with Professor Elizabeth Elbourne providing comment.  Elbourne is a significant scholar in missions history–one of my possible reviewers or blurb-writers–so it was particularly excellent to meet her.

In the 2011-2012 academic year, I published a book review in Chronicle of Historical Studies, put together a panel and presented a paper at the European History Section of the Southern Historical Association, and was invited to speak at a Symposium on Evangelicalism hosted by the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion in Waco, TX.  This was one of those times that the connections I’d made at the ASCH paid off; I met Joseph Stubenrauch, a fellow new PhD working in church history and the empire in the same period, in Grand Rapids.  He was about to start his job at Baylor at the time.  That fall, one of his Baylor colleagues contacted me about speaking about the symposium; Joe had given them my name as an up-and-coming scholar of nineteenth-century evangelicalism.  The Baylor experience was a fantastic opportunity and a delightful experience all around, not least because the keynote speaker at the symposium was Professor David Bebbington, one of my personal scholarly heroes.  In addition to doing his own talk, Bebbington commented on the other three papers presented, including mine.  I was able to converse with him and with other colleagues at Baylor throughout the day, and everyone was very gracious to me.  Here is the flyer from the symposium:  Baylor flyer_Elliott.

Documentation on my presentation at the European History Section of the Southern Historical Association is available here:   2011_Prof. Devel. Fund Request_Elliott; 2011_CAS Funding Approval_Elliott; Panel Proposal_Elliott.  This presentation took place in Baltimore and focused on the Caribbean dimension of my work. I was able to reconnect with some old colleagues and professors from graduate school at this conference; these are connections that I’m actively working to maintain.

In the 2012-13 school year, I was unable to do much conference travel due to pregnancy, but I did convene a panel at the Christian Scholars Conference in Nashville, and had a panel accepted at the Western Conference on British Studies in Las Vegas (September 2012, proposal available here:  WCBS_British_Missionary_Publicity).  Again, I was not able to travel there in person, but our panel chair kindly read the paper for me, and I received some helpful feedback via email.  I also wrote a book review of Parna Sengupta’s Pedagogy for Religion, on missionary education, for the Journal of World History during the 2012-13 winter that was published in 2013 (6JWH 24.3_Bk Revs_661-735_1st PRF.  My review begins on page 721.).

In October 2013, I put together a panel with my Baylor colleague Joe Stubenrauch for the North American Victorian Studies Association conference, an important, national interdisciplinary conference in my field (NAVSA Panel Proposal).  We ended up having a very tight panel whose papers spoke to each other quite directly and had some really incisive discussion as a result.  It was a productive conference with more good networking opportunities; I had some helpful conversation with colleagues there about the dissertation-to-book process and also enjoyed talking with other scholars who, like me, were trying to juggle professorship and new motherhood.

In January 2014, I was invited to be part of a panel at the joint meeting of the American Society of Church History and the American Historical Association examining the work of Professor David Bebbington on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of his seminal book Evangelicalism in Modern Britain.  The proposal was sponsored by the MacLellan Foundation, who covered all associated travel costs for panelists.  Professor Bebbington himself was present to respond, and the panel was made up of several other established and well respected scholars.  In short, I was very delighted to be asked and really enjoyed the meeting in Washington, D.C. (in spite of the polar vortex!)  The proposal and other documentation are available here:   invitation to join Bebbington panel; 2014 ASCH Bebbington Proposal (3); ASCH Panel acceptance.

The editor of the peer-reviewed historical journal Fides et Historia was present at our Bebbington Panel, and he approached all of the panelists to request that our papers be published in a special issue of the journal.  My journal article, “The Bebbington Quadrilateral Travels into the Empire,” came out in the spring of 2015.  You can read it here:  Fides et Historia_Elliott.

In September 2014, I helped organize a panel and presented a paper at the Conference on Faith and History at Pepperdine University in Malibu.  Here are the panel proposal and relevant emails:  CFH Panel Proposal; CFHPanelAcceptance.  My paper was entitled “Jesus Christ’s Golam:  Bengali Baptist Evangelists, 1800-1865.”  This conference was particularly fun for me because my colleagues and friends Ron Morgan and Mark Cullum presented there, as well!  I enjoyed getting to listen to Ron speak (unfortunately my flight schedule made me miss Mark’s paper) and having excellent conversation over sushi.

And most recently, I helped put together a panel and presented a paper at the Christian Scholars Conference here in Abilene in June 2015.  You can see our session rundown on the Christian Scholars Conference website:  Christian Scholars Conference 2015.  In the upcoming academic year, I intend to avoid doing further conference work so that I can concentrate my mental energy and time on revising the manuscript for the book project.

>Next Section:  Reflections on Scholarship and Productivity