/ AbstractWe propose a measurement of exclusive electroproduction of $φ$ mesons near threshold in Hall C. We will measure the |t|-dependence of the exclusive $φ$ electroproduction cross section, which has recently been proposed as an observable sensitive to the strangeness $D$-term. The contribution of strangeness to the total $D$-term is presently unknown, with different arguments favoring $D_s$ being large, being small, or even having opposite sign from the total $D$-term. Our exploratory measurement is designed to distinguish between these hypotheses. If $D_s$ turns out to be small, $φ$ electroproduction can be used to study the gluon $D$-term. In addition, this dataset will allow us to perform measurements of other exclusive meson final states, including the first measurement of $η'$ electroproduction and multi-differential measurements of $η$ and $ω$ electroproduction.