Jennifer Rycenga

Jennifer Rycenga is Professor Emerita of Comparative Religious Studies in the Humanities Department at San José State University. Her new book, Schooling the Nation: The Success of the Canterbury Female Academy for Black Women, can now be preordered, and is due out by early 2025. Her co-edited book (with Linda Barufaldi), The Mary Daly Reader, (New York University Press, 2017), featured the writings of this famed and notoriously Radical Lesbian-Feminist philosopher. Previously she has co-edited two books: Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance (Garland 2000, Routledge 2001), with Marguerite Waller; and Queering the Popular Pitch (Routledge 2006) with Sheila Whiteley. Her areas of interest include Abolition history; women's religious history; feminist theories of music; and theoretical issues concerning philosophies of immanence and panentheism. In the area of Abolition studies, her article on “Maria Stewart, Black Abolitionist, and the Idea of Freedom,” can be found in the Frontline Feminisms volume. Her article on "A Greater Awakening: Women's Intellect as a Factor in Early Abolitionist Movements, 1824-1834" appeared in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (21:2:31-59, Fall 2005). She also wrote five original entries for the Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition. (ed. Peter Hinks and John McKivigan, Greenwood Press, 2007). She has also produced Digital Humanities projects on The Unionist (a newspaper that supported the Canterbury Academy) and the Burleigh family of Plainfield, Connecticut. When not writing, Rycenga is bird-watching or iNaturalizing; she served many years as president of the Sequoia Audubon Society in San Mateo county, California. She now lives in Rochester, New York, with her wife Peggy Macres, and their pets Lyssa, Ipo, and Patsy Cline.