"Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet"
Terrie Aamodt presents on book
Terrie Aamodt, professor of history and English at Walla Walla University in College Place, Wash., will present on her recent book on Saturday, October 18. (Photo courtesy of Adventist Forum)
Andrews University welcomes Adventist Forum presentation “Ellen White Goes Public: The Collaborative Biography Project—Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet” on Saturday, Oct. 18, at 3:30 p.m. Terrie Dopp Aamodt, co-editor of the book and professor of history and English at Walla Walla University (College Place, Washington), will present in the Garber Auditorium of Chan Shun Hall on the campus of Andrews University. This event is free and open to the public.
Ellen White’s 70-year career included numerous encounters with the public. In the 1860s and 1870s, as she began to emerge as a public speaker, she sought to add audiences beyond the Adventist gatherings that packed her and her husband’s schedules.
“During an era when women were not encouraged to enter the public sphere, much less speak to ‘promiscuous’ (mixed) audiences, White developed a powerful public voice,” says Aamodt. “She spoke on religious topics in non-Adventist churches, particularly favoring Methodist congregations, and she also became a sought-after temperance lecturer in civic halls and at open-air camp meeting venues.”
White’s publicists sought newspaper coverage of these events, and she welcomed reporters’ questions and scrutiny. Since her death in 1915, however, her story has been re-told almost exclusively within her own Seventh-day Adventist faith.
“Audiences outside the Adventist church know much less about Ellen White today than they did at the time of her death, which was widely noted in American newspapers,” notes Aamodt.
The 2014 volume from Oxford University Press, Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, introduces her to a general academic audience, where she is little known. Aamodt will discuss past events and future trends in the ongoing story of White's relationship with the public.
Aamodt holds a degree from Washington Adventist University (Takoma Park, Maryland) and a master’s in English from The College of William and Mary in Virginia. In addition, Aamodt earned a PhD in American and New England Studies from Boston University in 1986, where her dissertation examined the idea of apocalypse in the American Civil War.
In 2007 Aamodt helped form a planning group for a national academic conference on Ellen White held in Portland, Maine, in 2009. Those efforts led to the publication of Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet by Oxford University Press in April 2014, a collective biography of 18 chapters written by 21 authors.
Her current project is writing Ellen White: Voice and Vision, a volume in the Adventist Pioneers biography series edited by George Knight.
Aamodt lives with her husband, Larry, and their two college-aged children in Walla Walla, Washington. Together they enjoy skiing, backpacking, running and cycling.
For more information, contact Art Robertson at robertsa2@earthlink.net or call 269-471-7150.
