From the Archives: GQ Cannon Narrates Part of the Decision to Call Sister Missionaries, 1898

The first official, female, Mormon missionary was set apart on 1898 March 27.  Ten days later, George Q Cannon, First Counselor in the First Presidency, spoke at General Conference. As presented in the conference report, he spent 2 out of 14.5 columns on the decision to call female missionaries. Below I give a five-hundred-word summary for those of you in a hurry and then the unbroken thirteen-hundred-word excerpt.

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Southwestern States Mission: Discreet Sisters, Part 1

Sister Carling?s mission call identifies ?faithful, discreet sisters? as candidates for missionary service. [1] Perhaps I have an idiosyncratic definition, but I think ?discreet? is ?prudently silent and/or unobtrusive,? [2] which seems odd as a primary descriptor for go-ye-into-all-the-world missionaries—and doubly so parallel to the ?faithful, energetic elders? in males? mission letters. [3] Below I will attempt to contextualize the idea of ?discreet? female, Mormon missionaries in the Progressive Era. [4]

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Boycotting General Conference 40 Years Ago: The Lamanite Generation, the American Indian Movement, and Temple Square

A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation at the University of Michigan on what benefits there might be to considering Utah as a settler colonial space.  As part of a section on the political implications of adopting such a posture, I included some photos of the Lamanite Generation, a group of BYU students who toured the United States as part of an all-native choir.  Afterwards, one of my friends who studies twentieth-century American Indian history came up to me.  She was horrified:  ?That?s when the American Indian Movement was happening.  Hadn?t they heard of it??

I didn?t know the answer.  The American Indian Movement (AIM) was a radical movement founded in the late 1960s that protested the poverty and violence that was endemic among native communities in the twentieth century.  They staged massive protests that insisted that Americans recognize that its treaties with native tribes were not being honored and that many of the most iconic buildings and monuments in the United States were on land that, by treaty, belonged to American Indians.

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New Book Notice: Matthew Kester, Remembering Iosepa

This is the part of the year when posting slows down here at JI, as the end of another semester–and the prospect of final papers, grading, committee duties, etc.–cuts into our precious blogging time.

But scholarship still presses forward! This week, I received a review copy of Matthew Kester’s new and exciting Remembering Iosepa: History, Place, and Religion in the West, just released by Oxford University Press. Kester, a professor and archivist at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, explores a group of Hawaiin converts who joined the Mormon church, immigrated to Utah, established their own community in the middle of Deseret’s desert, yet eventually moved back to their homeland after the Laie Temple was built. I remember first hearing about this story when working on the Church’s Historic Sites Committee, and Benjamin Pykles, who also works on Mormon notions of space and has written an excellent book on Nauvoo, gave a presentation on the topic. Just the image of native Hawaiins building their own oasis in the desert is fascinating, and the story becomes even more interesting as you peel back the layers.

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On Sacred Space, Carpets and Embodied Belief

[The following is a guest post from our good friend and former co-blogger Kris Wright.]

In the first sentence of the introduction to Women and Things 1750-1950: Gendered Material Strategies, editors Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin write

This volume takes as its object of investigation the overlooked and often despised categories of women?s decorative arts and homecraft activities as sites of important cultural and social work.[1]

I will admit that when I read that, I thought it might be a bit of hyperbole ? neglected, yes, but despised?  That seemed like an exaggeration. However after listening to President Elaine S. Dalton?s Conference address, ?We Are Daughters of Our Heavenly Father? and observing some of the online reaction to it, I am starting to wonder if despised is actually a good descriptor. Such reaction can shed light on why modern historians ignore Mormon women or have a difficult time integrating them into their work.

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Welcome to a New Mormon Studies Blog: Unusual Excitement, a Claremont Production

Whether for good or ill, blogging has become a public facet of the academy in general, and Mormon studies in particular. We at JI are proud to be the first blog exclusively devoted to the scholarly study of Mormonism, though we are pleased when we are joined by others. Last year, we welcomed Worlds Without End; this year, we welcome Unusual Excitement. While the former is an eclectic group of friends and scholars distributed throughout the nation, the latter and most recent blog is centered in one of the field’s center locations: Claremont’s Mormon Studies Program.

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Southwestern States Mission: April Fools’ Day and Other Reasons to Laugh

Since April Fools? Day was this week and General Conference yesterday emphasized the swelling number of missionaries, I thought I?d collect—without analysis—some lighter instances of what happens when young people are sent off into the world. [1] 

“A Pink Life Raft in a Blue Ocean”: Feminist Studies of Mormonism– An Interview with Maxine Hanks, Part I

This is Part One of my interview with Maxine Hanks, who edited and published her well-known feminist anthology, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, with Signature Books in 1992 here.

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An Evening with the Editors and Authors of Women of Faith, Volume 2

The Mormon Women’s History Initiative Team (here) is pleased to announce an Evening with the Editors and Authors of Women of Faith in the Latter Days, Volume 2, on Tuesday, April 9, 2013, at 7:00 p.m., at the 10th Ward Building in Salt Lake City.

Please join us for a thoughtful discussion of Mormon women’s biography, featuring editors Brittany Chapman and Rick Turley, a few featured authors of the biographies (to be announced), a brief program, refreshments, and opportunities to meet, mingle, and purchase books.   For an excellent review of Women of Faith, Volume 2, see Tona’s post here, and for a discussion of the complications of using biography in Mormon women’s history, you may reread Janiece’s excellent post here.

Also, look for biographies in Volume 2 by J.I.’s own Jenny R. and Andrea R-M.   Come and celebrate this excellent series!

Hope to see you there.

New (and loaded) Issue of Mormon Historical Studies

If you haven’t noticed, we have a proliferation of Mormon history journals. So much so, in fact, that it is difficult to keep up. (One way to stay on top of things: the forthcoming Mormon Studies Review!) That’s where your friends at JI come in with our journal recaps.

One journal that unfortunately is often overlooked is Mormon Historical Studies, edited by Alex Baugh. This is unfortunate, because it is often the most “nerdy” and over-specialized of the journals–and I mean that as the highest compliment. When it comes to straight history, this journal often carries strong work, and its pages often smell of archival research. The most recent issue is no exception; in fact, it is perhaps one of the strongest issues they have published to day, partly because it is a combined issue for the entire 2012 year (they often publish two issues a year). Below are the contents, with a little commentary by yours truly.

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