As promised, former JI blogger Elizabeth has teamed up with two other bright and thoughtful young historians of American religion to create a new and sorely needed blog. We are pleased to announce and endorse Scholaristas, a blog devoted to the study of women’s religious history by women. The bloggers describe themselves and their blog as follows:

As the title of this blog suggests, we are ladies with multiple layers. We are scholars who love strappy heals, vintage dresses, and cute purses. We are also scholars who take an academic interest in women?in their history and in their place in the world today. This virtual forum is a place for us discuss the things, silly and serious, that are on our minds. It will likely focus on women?s religious history but may occasionally wander into other realms of inquiry.  We hope you?ll join the discussion and make this a pleasant place to be.

Amanda, recent Mormon Scholars Foundation Summer Seminarian and PhD student at the University of Michigan, has put up the inaugural post, an intriguing retrospective of Dialogue‘s Pink Issue. She concludes by asking:

Although there has been a lot of work done on women?s history within the L.D.S. Church, such scholarship has not permeated the general membership.  I think the interesting question is not about the fact that many young girls and women are not versed in this scholarship but is about the circumstances that have led them to be so.  Why are feminist scholars still able to tell stories about young women who approach them after lectures to say that they ? at the age of twenty-two, twenty-three, or twenty-four ? had not realized that Mormon women had been involved in the movement for women?s rights in the nineteenth century or that Eliza Snow had been so important in early Mormonism?  Why when many Mormon students are challenged about the position of women within Church do they rarely cite the existence of the Woman?s Exponent in the 1870s or the development of Mormon feminism a hundred years later in the 1970s?  Why has the influence of feminist scholarship on Mormon women been limited to a small circle of church members?

Head on over and join in the conversation, and be sure to bookmark the site and stay current on what promises to be an intelligent, thoughtful, and important contribution to the Mormon and religion blogging communities.