Susanna Morrill

Susanna Morrill teaches courses in United States religious history. She received her doctorate in the history of religions from the University of Chicago. Her work in the recent past has focused on how early Mormon women used popular literature in order to argue for the theological importance of their roles in the home, community, and church.

Academic Credentials

PhD 2002, MA 1993 University of Chicago

BA 1989 Bryn Mawr College

Teaching

Fall 2024 Courses:

RELS 102 Food and Religion 
MWF 9:10AM - 10:10AM
Examination of the relationship between food, American religions, and American popular culture; how food is incorporated into formal religious rituals such as the Eucharist or fasting; how cooking, communal eating, and food practices are part of the more informal religious culture of religious communities. Also, consideration of whether eating and food have taken on religious meaning within American culture as a whole, using the Northwest as a focus.

RELS 254 Religion in Modern America, 1865 to Present 
MWF 11:30AM - 12:30PM
Impact of religion in modern America from the end of the Civil War to the present day, emphasizing the interaction between America’s many religions and emerging American modernity. The fate of “traditional” religion in modern America; “alternate” American religious traditions; urbanization, industrialism, and religion; science, technology, and secularism; evangelicalism, modernism, and fundamentalism; religious bigotry; pluralism; new religions and neofundamentalism.

RELS 342 Mormonism in the American Religious Context
MWF 12:40PM - 1:40PM
This course will use the origin and development of Mormonism in the U.S. as a case study to understand larger trends in American religious history, including the history and importance of folk and magical traditions in the U.S., prophetic/charismatic religious movements, the shifting relationship between church and state, public Protestantism in the U.S., secularization, and globalization.

Research

Professor Morrill teaches courses in United States religious history up to 1865; United States religious history, 1865-present; colonial American history; women in United States religious history; the body and health in United States religious history; and a seminar focusing on American religions. These courses reflect her interests in researching women in United States religions and, specifically, in finding women (and men) in American history by looking at non-traditional, popular sources—the places in American culture that women were able to safely create and inhabit.