History of the
Margaret Fuller Grants Program
Those who have been active in the new feminism o our time recognize that the drive for social change which it represents, like the earlier civil rights movement for racial equality, has no foreseeable stopping point."
— Mary Lou Thompson, UUWF forward to
Voices of the New Feminism
The Margaret Fuller Grants Program expands the concept of the UUWF Feminist Theology Awards, which came into being as a result of an exploration of feminist theology at the 1985 UUWF Biennial Convention.
Initially, the program's charge was to stimulate, through grant funding, production of scholarly and creative work in UU feminist theology and to make this work widely accessible. The first grants were made in 1989 and since then, over 35 have been given.
In response to new understandings about the diversity of feminist thought and language and increased interest in feminist ethics, the UUWF broadened the context for the award and reneamed the program after Margaret Fuller in the early 2000s. Since then grants have been awarded annually to fund selected projects. Projects have included a large variety of projects.
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Who was Margaret Fuller?
This
program was named after Margaret Fuller (1810-1859), a remarkable and
under-recognized prophetic voice from our Unitarian Universalist
heritage. As Elizabeth Stady Canton and
Susan B. Anthony wrote ofher, Margaret "possessed more influence on the
thought of American women than any woman previous to her time."
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With
her famous Boston women's "Conversations," in her editing of the
Transcendental journal the Dial, and later in her ground-breaking book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Feller urged women to develop their potential and to participate equally with men in the world.
Therefore, through its Margaret Fuller Grants Program, the UUWF, a continental membership organization working to advance justice for women and to promote their spiritual growth, seeks to influence thought and urge women to develop their potential by lifting up the diverse voices of UU women engaged in the creative work of religious feminisms.
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