Kathleen Flake
Kathleen Flake is a 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 law degree from the University of Utah, 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 19th and 20th 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.