Rachel Cope: Mormon Scholar

Rachel Cope is an assistant professor of Church History and Doctrine. When she was in elementary school, she learned that her great-grandmothers had wished they could have been formally educated. Cope decided then that she would become well educated and would educate other women.[1]

She earned her bachelor’s and master’s in American history from Brigham Young University. From Syracuse University, she earned a PhD in American history, with an emphasis in antebellum American religious history and American women’s history. Her current research focuses on how women lived and expressed their religiosity in nineteenth-century America.

She was a Research Editorial Fellow at BYU Studies from 2009-2010, and was a visiting fellow at the Manchester Wesley Research Centre during the Spring of 2010. Other fellowships she has been awarded include a New England Regional Fellowship Consortium; a Frederick B. Artz Summer Research Grant from Oberlin College; a Bridwell Library Fellowship from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas; the Ruth R. and Allison L. Miller Fellowship from the Massachusetts Historical Society; and a Gest Fellowship from Haverford College. In 2010 she was a visiting scholar at the Manchester Wesley Research Centre in England.

Cope discusses the lives and conversions of 19th-century women