Roll over Bruce R. McConkie: Creating Mormon History Playing Cards

I recently returned from my vacation to Tahiti.  While I was there, I discovered a set of playing cards where each of the cards was a different person from Tahitian history from the reign of Queen Pomare.  Iotete, a Tahitian chief who signed a document requesting that the French annex the islands, appears on a blue card wearing a feathered headdress and a red European-style coat.  The card also shows him as being heavily tattooed and wearing a grim expression.  Another card depicts Constance Gordon-Cumming, a Scottish travel writer who traveled to Tahiti in the 1870s and wrote extensively about her travels.  She appears as a young woman, dressed in a stylish red hat and yellow ribbons.  Although the Mormon missionaries Addison Pratt, Benjamin F. Grouard, and James Brown had their own corner (complete with facsimiles of their journals) in the Musee de Tahiti, they didn’t make the cut for the playing cards.

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I?m Bored: Responses to Mormonism in the Pacific

This week, I am traveling throughout New Zealand and Tahiti, partially as a vacation and partially as an initial foray into two of the countries that I write about in my dissertation.  As someone who works on Mormon missionaries in the South Pacific and Great Britain, I spend a lot of time reading the journals, diaries, and letters of Protestant missionaries who have encountered Mormons in their mission stations and among their congregations.  Sometimes their comments are unsurprising ? the usual vituperative rants about golden plates and polygamy that you would expect to find in the writings of any non-Mormon who had encountered Mormon missionaries for the first time.  At other times, the letters and diaries that I read can be surprising in their lack of interest and nonchalance about the appearance of sudden appearance of Mormonism. 

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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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Mormon Midwives and the Business of Being Born

I am about six months pregnant right now, which means that my backaches and I am inundated with a list of things that I am supposed to eat or not eat and do or not do.  According to Mayo Clinic, I should avoid certain types of fish including swordfish, shark, king mackerel, and tilefish but not shrimp, crab, canned tuna, salmon, Pollock, catfish, cod, or tilapia.  The fish in the latter group, however, should only be eaten in moderation.  I shouldn?t take a very hot bath or get into the hot tub.  It?s okay to eat hard cheeses like cheddar, feta, and provolone but not soft cheeses like brie, goat?s cheese, and gorgonzola.  Lunchmeat is out, as is sushi.  Tylenol, Metamucil, and Neosporin are okay if you get sick but Benadryl isn?t okay until after the first trimester and most other drugs are out until the baby is weaned.

Being pregnant has made me even more cognizant of the materials and histories that are produced about pregnancy.  Recently, there have been several documentaries made advocating for certain visions of women and reproductive health.  One of the earliest and perhaps most controversial is Ricki Lake?s The Business of Being Born

Neither Black Nor White: The Messiness of Racial Categorization and Black Mormon History

My Great Grandfather Antonio Alejo Aguilar with his First Wife

When I was ten years old, my great grandfather died.  He was ninety-six years old and had been one of the main objects of my affection since I was a toddler.  When we visited his house, he fed us cups of apricot nectar and regaled us with stories of his childhood in Mexico.  He told us about sucking the juice out of fresh cactus fruit, sneaking into the kitchen of his house and watching the maids cook, and attending medical school in Mexico City.  The stories from his adolescence were much darker.  When grandpa was sixteen, he had joined a regiment of federales and had fought in the Mexican Revolution.  A cannon ball came close enough to his head to shave off his hair, leaving him mostly bald for the rest of his life.  He also watched as Pancho Villa rode into one of the border towns of the United States and Mexico and shot a man he expected of sympathies with the Mexican government while the man?s wife bawled and cried for his life.  As a result of the stories that my grandfather told, I thought of him as being completely Mexican.  It was only after his death that I was realized how complicated that identity had been for him. 

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Review of Veda Hale’s “Swell Suffering: A Biography of Maurine Whipple”

Veda Hale, “‘Swell Suffering’: A Biography of Maurine Whipple”  http://www.amazon.com/Swell-Suffering-Biography-Maurine-Whipple/dp/1589581245

Note:  There is swearing in the first two paragraphs of this review.  I tried to edit it out, but doing so changed the meaning of the sentences it was in.  If swearing bothers you, skip the first two paragraphs.  Readers should also check out Blair Hodge’s review of “Swelling Suffering” at Faith Promoting Rumor: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithpromotingrumor/2011/05/im-pitching-the-whipple-biography-with-all-my-might/

Hannah Kaaepa: A Hawaiian Mormon Woman in Washington

Queen Liliuokalani as a young woman

In 1899, a young Mormon woman named Hannah Kaaepa traveled to Washington, D.C., as a delegate to National Council of Women?s Congress.  She had been invited by May Wright Sewall to speak about the rights of Hawaiian women and the recent overthrow of the Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani.  While in Washington, she was feted by Hawaiian Queen who threw her a dinner party and invited the women who had accompanied the young Kaaepa to Washington.  As a result, Emmeline B. Wells, Susa Young Gates, and Lucy B. Young

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Hawaiian History, Colonialism, and the Polynesian Cultural Center

About a week ago, I landed in Honolulu on a research trip for my dissertation.  Although I have been studying Mormon history in the Pacific for about three years, it was my first trip to Hawai?i and the Pacific.  Initially, this post was going to be about the Polynesian Cultural Center but after my week in Hawai?i, I have decided to write a much more general reflection about being an American and an American who studies Mormon history in the Pacific traveling in the islands.

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Having Children in Graduate School: Making the Decision

In a few days, my advisor will be having her biannual end-of-the-semester party.  There will be the usual accouterments of an academic party: cheese, crackers, wine, a sausage wheel, but there will also be two babies.  Last year, two of my advisor?s students had children.  She?s expecting another one of her students to have a baby this year, and at least one of her previous students also had children in graduate school.  Although her students seem to be particularly fecund, she?s not the only the advisor with pregnant graduate students in my department.

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Dear Lord, Why Did I Go to Graduate School? Surviving Coursework

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog entry about graduate school and the feelings of inadequacy that I was having.  I promised a blog series on surviving graduate school.  After much thought I?ve decided to do it chronologically, which means ironically that this series starts with the section that I had the least amount of trouble with: coursework.  Coursework was bliss for me ? I love being around people and don?t have issues working on a deadline, so the sociality and structure were fantastic.  It?s the dissertation process, which is more solitary and less guided, that I struggle with.  Please add any suggestions or advice you have in the comments below.

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