Nancy Tate Dredge

NANCY TATE DREDGE {[email protected]} was the second (1975–1981) and sixth (2000–09) editor of Exponent II. She was a contributor to Mormon Sisters: Women in Early Utah (ed. Claudia Bushman, 1976), for which she also acted as an assistant editor. She credits her experience editing Exponent II with the beginnings of her career in educational publishing, during which she worked as a content editor for such companies as Houghton Mifflin, Prentice Hall, and Pearson Publishing. With her business partner, Sue Booth-Forbes, she founded Editorial Associates, Inc., and acted as supervising editor for literature, grammar, history, reading, and art textbooks. Nancy lives with her anthropologist cum business consultant husband Paul in Arlington, Massachusetts, as do several of her five children and their families.

Key Turning Points in Exponent II’s History

Articles/Essays – Volume 49, No. 2

In her editorial in the very first issue, Claudia Bushman wrote “Exponent II, posed on the dual platforms of Mormonism and Feminism, has two aims: to strengthen The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and to encourage and develop the talents of Mormon women.” Years later, in an attempt to be welcoming to women wherever they were on the spectrum of belief and activity in Mormonism, we, as a board, vehemently discussed and re-wrote our mission statement, changing the phrase “Our common bond is our commitment to the Church and the women of the Church” to “Our common bond is our connection to the Church and our commit ment to women.” So, even though we questioned and diluted somewhat that first platform, we have always firmly adhered to the second, that of feminism. But Claudia was unknowingly throwing down a gauntlet by declaring our “modest little paper,” as she called it, to be feminist.

My Short Happy Life with Exponent II

Articles/Essays – Volume 36, No. 3

Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 191–1933
Claudia Bushman and others reflect back on Exponent II.