BYU and the LDS Church History Library are hosting a conference this Thursday and Friday entitled, “Beyond Biography: Sources in Context for Mormon Women’s History.” The conference looks to be a major step forward for Mormon history by engaging Mormon Women’s history through a number of methodologies. There is no registration fee–if you’re in Utah you will want to be at the BYU or LDS Conference Center!

R. Marie Griffith and Julie B. Beck will deliver the plenary addresses.

JI-er presentations can be found below. You can view the rest of the schedule here.

10:15111:30 a.m.
Concurrent Session 1

Session 1A: Expanding Approaches to Source Material

• Jenny Hale Pulsipher: Sifting Truth from Legend: Evaluating Sources for Native American Biography through the Life of Sally Exervia Ward
• Robin Scott Jensen: Documenting the Past: Women as Creators of the Manuscript History of the Church
• Janiece Johnson: Specters, Saviors, and Symbols: Women, Gender, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre

Session 1D: Women and Theology

• Benjamin E. Park: Kings and Queens of the Kingdom: Gendering the Mormon Theological Narrative
• Jennifer Reeder: “To Expound Scriptures, and to Exhort the Church”: 19th-Century Mormon Women and Public Discourse
• Kathryn Shirts: Leah Widtsoe as Theologian: Constructing an Identity for Latter-day Saint Women in the 20th Century

1:00-2:00 p.m.
Concurrent Session 2

Session 2B: Women in Life and Death

• Sherilyn Farnes: “If Only I Had A Shaddow of [a] Chance I Felt Assured That I Could Overcome”: Life at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania
• Kris Wright: Mormon Women and the Material Culture of Death

Session 2C: Women and Liturgy

• Jonathan A. Stapley: Approaching Female Participation in Latter-day Saint Liturgy
• Richard Bennett and Wendy Top: Women Temple Workers in St. George, 1877

2:15-3:30 p.m.
Concurrent Session 3

Session 3D: Women in Danger

• Andrea G. Radke-Moss: “Beyond Petticoats and Poultices’: Finding a Women’s History of the Mormon-Missouri War of 1838
• Amanda Hendrix-Komoto: “The Sounds of Blasphemy Are Not Heard in Our Streets’: Polygamy and the Response to Sexual Violence in Utah
• Joseph Stuart: “My Anguish Was Inexpressible’: Mormon Women, the Woodruff Manifesto, and Religious Disappointment”