Claiming Notability for Women Activists in Religion

Colleen D. Hartung; Melisa Ortiz Berry; Mary Ellen Chown; Deborah L. Fulthorp; Martha González Pérez; Mary C. "Polly" Hamlen; Rosalind Hinton; Rosemarie Daher Kowalski; Janice Poss; Karma Lekshe Tsomo; Elizabeth Ursic; Cherie White; Mary E. Hunt

doi:10.31046/atlaopenpress.40

Claiming Notability for Women Activists in Religion

Authors

Colleen D. Hartung (ed)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31046/atlaopenpress.40

Keywords:

Wikipedia, Notability, Biographies, Women, Gender bias, Religion, Activists

Synopsis

This volume includes 10 biographies about the life and work of women activists, noteworthy in their particular religious or spiritual contexts yet not identified as notable, or at least not notable enough to have a biographical article on Wikipedia. It also includes a theoretical chapter rethinking the concept of notability in relation to the quality and character of what is covered in these biographies. Each biographical chapter makes the case for its subject's notability. The work of these women as founders and leaders in the "great man" tradition is amplified and made visible, but their work as coalition builders, collaborators, mentors, facilitators of resistance movements and more, is also held up as an essential part of their notable character.

Collectively, the chapters in this volume work to leverage the concept of notability in ways that challenge and extend our understanding of this concept. This work provides useful, critical engagement with the concept of notability as an important aspect of biographical writing in general and of Wikipedia standards in particular for people who write biographies about women and the librarians who help them. This engagement is needed if we are to move the dial on gender bias around the biographical coverage of women generally and on Wikipedia in particular.

Chapters

Foreword

Mary E. Hunt

Foreword
Leveraging Notability
Defining, Critiquing, and Strategically Engaging a Wikipedia Guideline

Colleen D. Hartung

Leveraging Notability
Mae Eleanor Frey
Early 20th-century Pentecostal Matriarch

Deborah L. Fulthorp

Chapter 1
Janet McKenzie
A Sacred Artist's Life of Creative Activism

Elizabeth Ursic

Chapter 2
Miranda E. Shaw
A Passionate Path of Women's Active Contributions in Tantric Buddhism

Janice Poss

Chapter 3
Beatriz Melano
First Female Protestant Doctor of Theology in Latin America

Martha González Pérez, Cherie White

Chapter 4
Bertha Mae Lillenas
How Women Are Lost to History

Melisa Ortiz Berry

Chapter 5
Yvonne V. Delk
A "Soul on Fire" for Justice

Mary C. "Polly" Hamlen

Chapter 6
Ida Weis Friend
Living Her Best Century

Rosalind Hinton

Chapter 7
Shundō Aoyama Rōshi
Nurturing the Seeds of Zen

Karma Lekshe Tsomo

Chapter 8
Margaret Peoples Shirer
Explorer, Translator, and Proclaimer

Rosemarie Daher Kowalski

Chapter 9
Ellen Margaret Leonard, CSJ
A Life of Transforming Grace

Mary Ellen Chown

Chapter 10