In this episode, host Denis Long is joined by professor Scott Larson as they discuss Public Universal Friend, a traveling non-binary Quaker minister, and the complexities of gender identity in early Quaker history.

Scott Larson is a Lecturer IV in the department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is a scholar of transgender history and culture, with a particular focus on early American culture and religion. His scholarship investigates the ways that radical religious experience in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world transformed gender, sexuality, disability, and racial formations in early America. His work has appeared in the Journal of Early American Studies and Transgender Studies Quarterly. He received a M.A. in Theology from Yale Divinity School and received his Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington University.

In this episode, we talk with Alison Titman, the executive director of the Alice Paul Institute. We discuss activism among Quaker women and the life and legacy of Alice Paul, a significant figure in the women’s suffrage movement of the early twentieth century. Join us as we uncover untold stories in Quaker women’s history!

In this inaugural installment, Denis is joined by guest Dr. Marcus Rediker as they discuss Quaker involvement in early movements for the abolition of slavery through the lens of Benjamin Lay's revolutionary and controversial practices.

Dr. Rediker taught at Georgetown University from 1982 to 1994, lived in Moscow for a year (1984-5), and is currently a Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also Senior Research Fellow at the Collège d'études mondiales / Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris. Dr. Rediker has written, co-written, or edited ten books, including The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist (Beacon Press, 2017). He has, over the years, been active in a variety of social justice and peace movements, most recently in the worldwide campaign to abolish the death penalty.

Thank you for listening, and join us as we Meet Quaker History.