Kathleen Flake
Associate Professor of American Religious History

B.A., Brigham Young (1974)
J.D., Utah (1980)
M.A., Catholic (1995)
Ph.D., Chicago (2000)

Email: kathleen.flake@vanderbilt.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Course Information Webpage

Professor Flake researches the strategies by which religious communities maintain a sense of fidelity to an originating vision, while changing over time. Consequently, her particular research interests are in the constructive uses of narrative and ritual by modern religious communities. She teaches courses in American religious history and in the interaction of American religion and law. Prior to her appointment at Vanderbilt Divinity School, Professor Flake was a litigation attorney in Washington, D.C., having received her J.D. from the University of Utah and her B.A. in English from Brigham Young University.

Book:

The Politics of Religious Identity: the Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle. University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Articles (PDF):

2007 "Translating Time: The Nature and Function of Joseph Smith's Narrative Canon," Journal of Religion 87 (October, 2007): 497–527.

2003 "Re-placing Memory: Latter-day Saint Use of Historical Monuments and Narrative in the Early Twentieth Century," Religion and American Culture 13 (Winter 2003):69-110.

1995 “"Not to be Riten’: The Nature and Effects of the Mormon Temple Rite as Oral Canon,", Journal of Ritual Studies 9, 2 (Summer, 1995):1-21.