Carol Ann Vaughn Cross studies social history at the intersection of religion, technology and culture, sex and gender. Prior to coming to Samford in 2000, she taught at Judson College, worked for The Alabama Review and did post-graduate studies at St. Andrews University (UK). Cross has taught various courses at Samford, served as a faculty-in-residence at Samford’s Daniel House in London, directed the Christian Women’s Leadership Center at Samford from 2000-2008, and led faculty-student cadres for academic and spiritual development.
Degrees and Certifications
- PhD, Auburn University
- MA, Auburn University
- BA, History, University of Alabama-Huntsville
Publications
"Southern Baptist Slaveholding Women and Mythologizers." Religions 15, no. 9: 1146.
Review of Doing the Word: Southern Baptists’ Carver School of Church Social Work and Its Predecessors, 1907-1997 by T. Laine Scales and Melody Maxwell, and Home without Walls: Southern Baptist Women and Social Reform in the Progressive Era by Carol Crawford Holcomb, Journal of Southern History Volume 88, Number 3 (August 2022): 584-586.
Review of Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic by Emily Conroy-Krutz, Religious Studies Review Volume: 47 Issue 3 (2021) ISSN: 0319-485X. Online ISSN: 1748-0922.
“Blurring the Boundaries of Plants and Humans: Erasmus Darwin’s Loves of the Plants.” In Psychopharmacology and British Literature. Natalie Roxburgh and Jennifer Henke. Palgrave series in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 2020.
“Recovering Personhood from Religious Mythologies in Crawford Howell Toy: The Man, the Scholar, the Teacher by Mikeal C. Parsons (Mercer University Press, 2019): A Review Symposium.” Perspectives in Religious Studies 46, Issue: 4 (2019): 461-472.
“When That Which is Perfect is Come’: Henry Drummond and ‘The Changed Life,’” Christian Perspectives on Transhumanism and the Church: Chips in the Brain, Immortality, and the World of Tomorrow." Eds Steve Donaldson and Ron Cole-Turner. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
“Living in the Lives of Men: Martha Foster Crawford.” Social Sciences & Missions 25.1 (2012): 102-128.
“Missionary Returns and Cultural Conversions in Alabama and Shandong,” North American Foreign Missions, 1810-1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy, ed. Wilbert Shenk (Wm. B. Eerdman’s, 2004), 243-260.
“85th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment.” Birmingham News, August 26, 2005.
“Transformational Leaders Must Be Advocates,” EthicsDaily.com op-ed, March 29, 2002.
Southern Baptist Women in History, EthicsDaily.com series, 2000.
Review, Stepping Out of the Shadows: Alabama Women, 1819-1990. The Alabama Review (October 1998).
“The American Christmas: A Cultural Triumph of Protestant Christianity.” The Indian Journal of American Studies (Hyderabad, India), Vol 24 (1994).
Papers and Presentations
"Whose Virtue and Character Education? SBC Mythology and Classical Christian Curricula in the Nineteenth-Century Bible Belt." Conference on Faith and History, October 2024.
“Did Lottie Moon Drink Alcohol? De-mythologizing the Lottie Moon Cookbookand Its Role in Southern Baptist Hagiography of Slaveholding Women.” Joint meeting of the Baptist History and Heritage Society and the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, 2024.
“Telling the Stories of African American Missionaries and Deconstructing Missions Mythologies of Cultures of White Supremacy.” Panel: “African American Missions History: Research and Teaching Methods prompted by Kimberly Hill’s Higher Mission.” American Society of Church History, 2021.
“What Happened to the Anti-Abolition Missionaries? Reckoning with the Historiography of Evangelicalism in the U. S. South: A Case Study from the Southern Baptist Convention.” American Society of Church History, 2019.
“How Teaching Core Texts Courses Informs Our Research: Go Set A Watchman and ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’.” Association of Core Texts and Courses, 2018.
“A Minister In and Out of Convention: The First Woman to Address the Southern Baptist Convention.” Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2018.
“The 13th Step: Recovery of an Interfaith Philosophy and Practice with 1 Corinthians 13 by Drummond, Gandhi, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts/Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, 2017.
“1 Corinthians 13 as Spiritual Practice.” Biola Center for Christian Thought, 2016.
“Sex, Botany, & Politics: Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants.” Association of Core Texts and Courses, 2015.
“Putting the ‘Higher’ in Education. . . Or, Why Human Teachers Matter: Augustine and Love.” Teaching the Christian Intellectual Tradition, 2014.
“1 Corinthians 13 and the Imago Dei: Confessing Our Virtues and Vices with Uses and Non-Uses of Technology in Higher Education.” Virtues and Vices in College Teaching & Higher Ed. Kuyers Institute, 2013.
“Madam Gao’s Schools for Boys in 19th-Century-China.” Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity, David Stowe Research Fellowship, 2011.
“Keeping Well-Oiled The Hinges of Religious Liberty: Roger Williams' Letter to the Town of Providence.” Association of Core Texts and Courses, 2009.
“Alabama Religious Culture and State Constitutions.” Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform, 2009.
“Western Women in Nineteenth-Century China.” Plenary, International Consortium of Baptist Studies, 2006.
“History of Women Leaders and Christianity.” Arab Baptist Theological Seminary, Beirut, Lebanon, 2006.
“An American Woman among Taiping and Boxers.” Southern Historical Association, 2006.
Panel, “Religion and Politics in the Blue and Red State Divide.” University of Alabama School of Law “Harmonies of Liberty” Symposium, 2006.
“Gender, Culture and Christianity in Nineteenth-Century China.” Visiting Lecturer, Salem State, 2005.
“Women, Archetypes, and Imago Dei.” Training Effective Leaders Conference, Woman’s Missionary Union, 2004.
“Women and Civil Rights.” Southern School of Union Women, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, 2003.
“Matriarchy, the Gospel Mission Movement, and Re-Interpretation of Southern Baptist Historiography.” Yale-Edinburgh Group on 20th-Century Christianity 1999.
“A ‘Large-Throated Frog in the Pond’.” Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame, 1998.
“ ‘A Sister Hath Gone Forth’: Gender and Missions.” Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in America/Religious Research Association, 1995.
Other
Co-producer, Brother Joseph & The Grotto. Red Clay Pictures, 2013.
Honors and Awards
Buchanan Teaching Award, Samford University (2017-2018)
