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Drew University Special Collections and University Archives Announces Grants

Gabi Kim, Maria Sonnleithner, and Hong Zhang receive awards

July 2024 – Drew University Library’s Department of Special Collections and University Archives is pleased to announce the awardees for the 2024-2025 Florence Ellen Bell Scholar Award and the Bell Grant for the Study of Korean and Korean-American Methodism.

These competitive grants support the study of Methodism at The United Methodist Archives and History Center at Drew University. The Florence Ellen Bell Scholar Award provides $2,500, and the Bell Grant for the Study of Korean and Korean-American Methodism provides $1,000. 

Florence Ellen Bell Scholar Awards

Hong Zhang, PhD

Hong Zhang received her PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. Currently, she is a professor of East Asian Studies at Colby College, teaching both advanced Chinese courses and courses on modern and contemporary China and East Asian societies. Her research interests include China’s one-child policy, population aging, new trends of aging and eldercare; gender and women’s studies; labor migration, urbanization, and environmental studies; and US-China relations and missionary studies.

Her research project is titled “The Trials and Triumphs of Women Missionaries in China, 1850-1950.” Her research will have two related focuses using the archival materials at the United Methodist Archives and History Center: one to collect information on the establishment and operation of missionary middle schools, hospitals, and clinics in China, and the other to study the life stories of women missionaries who played a key role in setting up and running such middle schools and hospitals and clinics.

Maria Sonnleithner

Maria Sonnleithner is currently pursuing a master’s degree in archival studies in Vienna, Austria, and is a high school teacher of history, English as a second language, and religious education. She is also a board member of the German-language Methodist historical journal “EmK Geschichte.” Her research focuses on Austrian and European Methodist and Protestant history, while also exploring religious, gender, and queer studies. 

Her project examines the state recognition of the Austrian Methodist Church in 1951 and the controversies surrounding it, influenced by the rebuilding of Austria after World War II and its very recent past in National Socialism. Located in Central Europe, it is caught up in the then emerging Cold War and the ideals between Western democracy and Eastern communism. Other influences include Methodist missionaries in the US and Central and Eastern Europe, some of which interfered in a diplomatic manner while others as if they were fighting for their lives. There is a very small church in Austria that has been trying for many years to exist in a very Catholic country. And there are many questions that have not yet been answered and that will hopefully soon be found in the holdings of the Methodist Archives at Drew University.

Bell Grant for the Study of Korean and Korean-American Methodism

Gabi Kim

Gabi Kim is a Master of Theological Studies Candidate at Harvard Divinity School, concentrating in History of Christianity. She started her journey studying Asian American history and religion at Emory University where she obtained her bachelor’s in history. 

Gabi is looking at American missionary women in the early twentieth century to elucidate the political, spiritual, and gendered aspects of the Methodist missionary enterprise in Korea. This project provides a rich opportunity to delve into significant historical intersections of race, gender, and religion. By looking into the narratives of key figures in the network such as Mattie Wilcox Noble, Nellie Dyer, Helen Rosser, Bertha A. Smith, and more, she hopes to provide a broader understanding of women’s history, Methodist missionary networks, and a new way of looking into Asian American transpacific history which has largely been viewed from the West Coast perspective by centering women from the Midwest, South, and East Coast.

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