The Divinity School has appointed five visiting lecturers and research associates to teach women's studies during 1981, the first year of the school's new Women's Studies in Religion program.

The five scholars, selected after a year-long search, will make suggestions for improving the women's studies program at the Div School, in addition to researching and teaching a course in their field of expertise. Barbara Pope, assistant professor of women's studies at the university of Oregon and one of the newly-appointed research associates, said yesterday.

The new program--established with grants from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations--is a revised and enlarged version of a program which the School has had for three years.

"We are very pleased with the program because it served to encourage us to make a curriculum wide commitment, as well as bringing in the faculty members to do that," Constance H. Buchanan, director of the program and a member of the Div School Faculty, said yesterday.

Recognition

The Div School Faculty voted last spring to include women's studies in the school curriculum.

Pope, who will teach a course on female saints and Maryology in the 19th century, said she is looking forward to working at Harvard because there are excellent divinity libraries both here and elsewhere in Boston and because the appointment will allow dialogue with other women scholars.

Other scholars who will be coming to Harvard next year include Karl E. Borreson, member of the Norwegian Research Council on Theology. Jorun J. Buckley, an expert on the Gnosticism. JoAnn Cariton, professor of religion at Occidential College: and Cheryl T. Gilkes, professor of sociology at Northeastern University.