Female healing and non-Mormon women

Thanks to J. Stapley for his post contributing to Women’s History Month here at the Juvenile Instructor.

It has been a year or so since the article on female ritual healing that Kristine and I wrote was published (available here). In that time I have continued to gather sources relating to the topic as I come across them. Without looking particularly hard (once you start looking, references are ubiquitous), I have gathered seventy-four more examples and added them to the database. In the last couple weeks, however, I have found two that are fairly unique.

These two texts were both written by non-Mormon women for popular audiences.

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March Madness: Recovering our Past through Women’s History Month and Relief Society Birthday Parties

We might be a little late kicking off our Women?s History Month events here at the Juvenile Instructor.  But our spirit is willing, and we still have sufficient time that we are pleased to offer your some significant contributions on Mormon women?s history from Jonathan Stapley, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, guest blogger David Pulsipher, myself, and others.   National Women?s History Month should be even more important to Mormons, intersecting as it does with the yearly March anniversary of the founding of the female Relief Society of Nauvoo.  While the latter is given varying degrees of attention depending upon the particular ward or branch and its available resources, the former is sometimes dismissed as a tool of feminist political correctness.  Still, I think the correlation of the two provides unique opportunities for LDS scholars to broaden our understanding of women?s experiences in the past, and to look for new ways to honor their contributions, spirituality, and sociality.

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A Weekend Poll

I’ll be teaching a seminar this fall on American religious pluralism and I need to submit my book adoptions soon. What’s hip, new and suitable for upper-level undergrads? Or, alternatively, what are the go-to classics? It will be a general course, not specifically on Mormonism, but I know this crowd would have good ideas, so I’m just throwing it open for suggestions.

Just to reminisce… when I took my undergrad American religion course from Steve Marini at Wellesley College (using the cross-registration bus provided by MIT), we used Stephen Allstrom’s Religious History. Good times.

Suggest away.

Introducing New Permablogger Amanda Hendrix-Komoto

We’re thrilled to announce that after an excellent stint as a guest blogger, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto has agreed to join the JI as our newest permablogger. If you haven’t yet, check out her provocative post on bodies and the history of Mormon girls and her more autobiographical reflections on studying Mormon history and the labels we use to describe ourselves and our “Mormon” subjects. And then please join us in welcoming Amanda to the Juvenile Instructor!

The Tensions of Church and State, Public and Private: Tracing Mormonism’s Political Theology in the 19th Century

As the “world is governed too much” and as there is not a nation or dynasty, now occupying the earth, which acknowledges Almighty God as their law giver, and as “crown won by blood, by blood must be maintained,” I go emphatically, virtuously, and humanely, for a THEODEMOCRACY, where God and the people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteousness.               -Joseph Smith, 1844

I was at dinner a couple nights ago with some American historians discussing the current GOP election. Someone made the astute point that one reason this year’s primaries will likely go longer than previous elections—including the possibility that there won’t be a winner prior to the convention—is that the election rules have changed, most especially the way votes are proportioned in each contest. Typical protocols and boundaries, it seems, are now gone, leading to the rambunctious and contested situation we are currently in. Among those typical rules that have disappeared, someone jokingly added, was the separation of church and state. We all laughed, but at the same time sighed because we knew there was more truth in that quip than we would like to admit.

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Lucy Emily Woodruff Smith?s 1893-94 Diary: What it Reveals about Lucy, her Husband, and Ourselves, Part II

My first interest in the 1893-94 diary of Lucy Smith stemmed from her brief visit to the Chicago World?s Columbian Exposition of 1893.  ?Fair diaries,? as I like to call them, are difficult to find, especially those written by women, with those by Mormon women even more rare.  For my own scholarship, visitors to the fair potentially have much to reveal about contemporary American views on women?s rights, race, American patriotism, imperialism, technological progress and culture in the 1890s.[1]  Lucy?s diary didn?t give me as much of the cultural comment that I was hoping for, but a few promising nuggets.

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Teaching Mormonism at Georgetown-Unit 1: Joseph the Prophet

The first day of class we spent talking about perceptions of Mormonism using Pew Forum surveys (among others) as well as clips from a variety of TV shows like South Park and The Colbert Report. We spent the next two days of the class reading Richard Bushman?s A Very Short Introduction to Mormonism. Basically, I wanted to give the students a good overview and especially a vocabulary list. I think it was a very good idea, and it certainly helped the students get a good first look at many of the issues we will be dealing with.

For the first unit of the class we read large portions of Richard Bushman?s Rough Stone Rolling. Bushman?s biography is a good one for several reasons, but mostly because I think it?s a biography that takes the historical data at face value, yet doesn?t try to make metaphysical claims that go above and beyond the historical data.

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Scholarly Inquiry: Soliciting Questions for Paul Gutjahr, Author of The Book of Mormon: A Biography

Paul Gutjahr, professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington has a new book forthcoming in about a month with Princeton University Press. The book is The Book of Mormon: A Biography. See an excerpt here, the table of contents and prologue here, and the first chapter here.

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Andrea Radke-Moss Joins the JI

We’re excited to announce that Andrea Radke-Moss has agreed to join the JI as our newest permablogger! Please join us in giving her a warm welcome.

Andrea G. Radke-Moss is a professor of history at Brigham Young University-Idaho, but currently on a two-year leave of absence to be home with her two later-in-life babies. Her book, Bright Enoch, a history of coeducation at land-grant universities in the 19th century West, was published with the University of Nebraska Press in 2008. Since then, she has published numerous chapters on women in the Great Plains, Mormon women at the Chicago World?s Fair, and women in higher education in the West. She is a contributor to the current Women of Faith series by Deseret Book. She is currently researching elite Mormon women?s and men? birthday celebrations in the 19th-century, and Mormon women?s experiences with violence in Missouri.

JI Resources on Blacks and the Priesthood

[Last week’s Bott controversy (See the Slate article by JI’s Max Mueller) generated not one but two official statements from the LDS Church. With all the discussion around the net on the issue of blacks and the priesthood, I’m posting this updated list of JI posts on the subject for your reference.]

Juvenile Instructor Posts

Paul Reeve’s excellent guest post about Bott’s remarks and dishonoring Elijah Abel’s legacy. This should be required reading. Here’s a sample:

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