Religious Lives of Ozarks Women

Inter-Generational Storytelling

With a desire to expand the Religious Lives of Ozarks Women archive, we want to move the project beyond the classroom and into the community with The Religious Lives of Ozarks Women: Inter-generational Storytelling from the Older to the Younger project.

These interviews are important for three reasons: 1) They provide Ozarkian religious women with an opportunity to tell their stories and to have those stories preserved for future generations; 2) The stories will allow increased inter-generational contact between the youth and the older members, and it may inspire a greater appreciation for both their religious and regional heritage; 3) The Ozarks is an understudied region and a collection of oral histories contributes to both the religious history of the U.S. and to Missouri State University's Public Affairs mission.

Individuals who have been trained and certified in humans subjects research will work with religious communities throughout the Ozarks to train and equip their younger members (15-30 years old) to interview older women (60 years and older) within their respective religious communities. These recorded and transcribed oral histories will be added to the RLOW archive as an auxiliary project, along with a Focus Group of the youth reflecting on their interview experience. Thus, the youth perspective on their encounter with the narratives of the older generation is an additional dimension of this project.