Your Trusted Friend: Untold Histories of Five Christian Women's Magazines, 1974-2023
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Andersen Tuttle, Karlin
- Graduate Program:
- Mass Communications (PHD)
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 21, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Anthony Olorunnisola, Program Head/Chair
James Risley, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Matt Tierney, Outside Field Member
Cathleen Cahill, Outside Unit Member
Matt McAllister, Co-Chair, Major Member & Dissertation Advisor
Sara Liao, Major Field Member - Keywords:
- Christian women's magazines
women's magazines
Brio Magazine
Daughters of Sarah
Just Between Us
Christian Womanhood - Abstract:
- Christian women’s magazines emerged in the 1970s as one of the many sub-sections of the larger women’s magazine industry. Those new publications met the demand for magazines that better addressed a younger population of readers who encountered a rapidly changing world that offered women greater professional, financial, and legal rights. Media scholars in media history and women’s studies have spent the decades since debating if secular women’s periodicals furthered women’s liberation or repeated existing conservative messages. Their focus, no matter the conclusion, has rested on secular publications and left magazines made for and by Christian women out of the conversation. This project offers the first history of five Christian women’s magazines published since the early 1970s to fill in that gap: Daughters of Sarah (1974 – 1996), Christian Womanhood (1975 – current), Just Between Us (1990 – current), Brio (1990 – 2009, 2017 – current), and Brio & Beyond (1990 – 2009). Each publication addressed readers who felt unsupported in their beliefs and often isolated due to their convictions or role in their church. Published reader letters repeated the same mantra to each magazine: you are a friend, you are a lifeline. Ultimately, telling the story of these five magazines addresses an understudied area in religious media history while illuminating and questioning assumptions about women’s agency in traditionally patriarchal religious spaces.