Author Description

"Most readers who open this book will meet familiar Naeseth, Brodahl, Parkander. Some will remember them as mentors, even more as inspired teachers and counselors, and the rest as a large part of campus folklore and legend. Why, then, the need to tell the stories of women who have shaped Augustana? When Ann Boaden asked this question a number of years ago, she discovered that these well-known stories were the exception. Almost from its beginnings in 1860, Augustana College was shaped by a few brave women students and teachers who refused to accept the limited roles convention assigned them. For the most part, the stories of these early pioneers remained untold, hidden away in dusty archive boxes, a letter here and there, a fragment of a diary, a newspaper article. Dr. Boaden set about restoring these women to their stories, not only because they deserved it, but because the history of the college would be the richer for it. This book tells those stories. Approaching her work with what theologian Karen Armstrong calls "compassionate research," Dr. Boaden has done more than assemble the stories of these Augustana women from bits and pieces of often scanty evidence; she invites us inside those stories to imagine how they must have seen a world that was often hostile to them, but about which they cared a great deal - cared enough to bring their light and leaven to expand its boundaries. The book ends in the 1960s, with the stories of women already well-known. But even here, those readers who think they know these stories may be in for a surprise or two. - Roald Tweet, Professor Emeritus of English, Augustana College" --From dust jacket