Background 

Beth Ann Williams (Ph.D. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) is a historian whose research focuses on modern East Africa. Her work explores the mutually constitutive development of Christianity, gender norms, community life, and spiritual practices in post-independence Kenya and Tanzania. Her manuscript, Power under Patriarchy: Christian Women, Gender Norms, and Well-Being in Tanzania, 1950-2000, uses interviews, archival materials, and ethnographic observations to argue that Protestant religious ideologies represented a vital resource for Christian women as they negotiated their agency, influence, and well-being. Beyond this project, Dr. Williams is interested in questions of gendered identity, labor distribution, belonging, feminist theology, and history-making in East Africa and across the Global South. Her next project will explore the writings and advocacy of African women theologians. These religious intellectuals have been publicly challenging their faith communities as insiders since the 1980s, producing reflections on African Christianity rooted in their embodied experiences as women. She has two articles published in the Journal of Religion in Africa (2018) and the Women’s History Review (2017) in addition to a piece under review at African Studies Review (2021). Dr. Williams has taught History courses on Global, African, and American history. At FSU she teaches courses related to Women & Gender, Qualitative Methods, and African/Africana religions. 

PUBLICATIONS

• Williams, Beth Ann. “Mainline Churches: Networks of Belonging in Postindependence Kenya and Tanzania.” Journal of Religion in Africa 48, no. 3 (December 2018): 255–85.

• Williams, Beth Ann. “‘Call Us Ms.’: Viva and Arguments for Kenyan Women’s Respectable Citizenship 1975–80.” Women’s History Review 26, no. 3 (2017): 414–32.

Courses

Spring 2020

• Gender & Religion
• Africana Religions

Fall 2021

• Religion in Africa
• Qualitative Research Methods