Gale Kenny

Professor Kenny's research focuses on religion, race, and gender in the United States and the imperial and internationalist entanglements of American religious movements. Her work has particularly examined liberal religion and its limits in the context of Protestant foreign missions, antislavery, and campaigns for women's rights. She is currently embarking on a new research project considering the life and career of the controversial theosophist leader Katherine Tingley.

Professor Kenny's publications include two books: Contentious Liberties: American Abolitionists in Post-Emancipation Jamaica (University of Georgia Press, 2010) and Christian Imperial Feminism: White Protestant Women and the Consecration of Empire (NYU Press, 2024). She has also published articles in Slavery and Abolition, Journal of the Civil War Era, and Religion and American Culture.

At Barnard, Professor Kenny teaches courses in American religious history, including Religion in America I and II, Religious Histories of New York City, Religion in the Archive, and a First-Year Seminar on "Cults;" She also regularly teaches the department's methodology course, Religion Lab, and Senior Seminar.