Rachel Cope, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Church History, Brigham Young University

Dr Cope spent four weeks doing research in Manchester in Spring 2010: while there, she focused on the conversion experiences of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century women. In particular, she immersed herself in the manuscript copies of Mary Fletcher's narrative. Dr Cope has a particular interest in the evolution of female narratives as they moved from manuscript to published text.  Dr Cope is the recipient of New England Regional Consortium Fellowship and a Bridwell Library Fellowship, each of which is enabling her to prepare her dissertation for publication as a book. She is assistant editor for Wesley and Methodist Studies and a member of the Mormon Women's History Initiative Team. She is the lead series editor for the Mormon Studies Series through Farleigh Dickinson University Press. 

Select Recent Publications

Family Life in England and America, 1690–1820, ed. Rachel Cope, Amy Harris, and Jane Hinckley,4 vols (Routledge, 2015).

Rachel Cope and Bradley Kime. 'The Vision: A Dream Account Collected and Preserved by Mary Bosanquet Fletcher', Wesley and Methodist Studies 8:1 (January 2016), 52–66.

'Composing Their Own Lives: Women and Religious Seeking in Nineteenth-Century Memoirs', in Nineteenth-Century American Women Write Religion: Lived Theologies and Literature, ed. Mary Wearn (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 45-58.

'Salvific Significance in Personal Life Stories', Magistra: A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History 20/1 (Summer 2014), 21-57.

Email: rachel_cope@byu.edu