Kathleen Flake

Kathleen Flake is an American historian, writer, and attorney and is currently the Richard Lyman Bushman chair of Mormon studies at the University of Virginia.

Education
Flake obtained a BA from Brigham Young University, an MA from Catholic University of America, a JD from the University of Utah College of Law, and a PhD from the University of Chicago.

Career
Flake was previously a professor of American religious history at the Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University. While a graduate student, Flake took a summer seminar course for graduate students on Mormon history with Richard L. Bushman.

Flake's research in the area of American religious history focuses on the adaptive strategies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American religious communities and the effect of pluralism on religious identity. She also studies constructive function of text and ritual in maintaining and adapting the identity and gendered power structures of religious communities. Flake studies the influence of American law on American religion and the theological tensions inherent in the First Amendment religious clauses.

Personal life
Flake is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a mission in Japan. She is a distant relative to former U.S. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona; they share a great-grandfather, William J. Flake.

She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Works

 * Books


 * Book chapters


 * Journal articles