By June 3, 2012
A few weeks ago, on the topic of evil spirits encountered by missionaries in the Southwestern States Mission, I wrote: ?There are a few acknowledgments of the possibility of possession, but no instances of it.? Now, after a trip to the Church History Library, the possession record is slightly more complicated. [1]
By May 30, 2012
Women and the LDS Church: Historical
and Contemporary Perspectives Conference
August 24 – 25, 2012
Fort Douglas, Officer’s Club Theater
150 S. Fort Douglas Blvd
University of Utah
By May 27, 2012
How were mission presidents called and trained? I only have two examples, told from only one perspective, so I?ll simply give an ?and then? and then? and then?? narrative. Also: I think the correspondence loses more than usual in gloss, so I?ll reproduce many of the diary entries.
By May 25, 2012
Paul Gutjahr is professor of English at Indiana University. His book The Book of Mormon: A Biography was recently published by Princeton University Press. See an excerpt here, the table of contents and prologue here, and the first chapter here. In the hustle and bustle of the semester, I neglected getting your questions to Dr. Gutjahr until this week, but fortunately for us he provided these excellent responses quite promptly. We at the JI would like to thank Dr. Gutjahr for taking the time to participate in this series. Note: Grant Hardy provided these thoughts on the book and you can see Blair’s review here.
Q. While your research interests seemingly lend themselves to this project particularly well, I?m interested in hearing more about the genesis of this book. What motivated you to write it? What, if anything, did you find especially interesting and/or surprising? What other potential research projects dealing with the Book of Mormon do you see as promising/important?
By May 20, 2012
In September 1857 a group of Mormons (and some Native Americans) attacked, disarmed, and then killed approximately 120 men, women, and children from an Arkansas-to-California wagon train. In the early 1900s this ?Mountain Meadows Massacre? was in living memory and Arkansas was part of the Southwestern States Mission. [1] How did Mormon missionaries in East Texas encounter and deal with it?
By May 13, 2012
I am not aware of any primary sources by women in the Southwestern States Mission near the turn of the century. The five traveling missionaries I have been studying did not write much about mothers. There are a handful of entries explicitly noting letters to or from ?Mother?; in 1900 President Duffin released two Elders on account of their mothers? failing health [1]; and Elder Clark transcribed a mission song wherein ?teardrops Stained a mother face? [2]; but that?s about it. [3] The Elders did, however, note work done by women they encountered and my not-yet-systematically-argued impression is that the Elders were struck by how hard the work was and touched when it was done for them.
By May 12, 2012
Mormon missionary history typically focuses on the histories of the white men who traveled from the gold fields of California to proselytize among the native Hawaiians or among Australians living in Perth and Melbourne. Although these histories can be engaging forays into Mormonism, my research recently has focused on the men and women who lived in Laie in an attempt to avoid American anti-polygamy legislation. Doing so has been a fascinating glimpse into the dynamics of the early Mormon community. I have learned, for example, that Susa Young Gates loved a bit of salacious gossip, even though she often repented of it afterward. The women of the mission responded bitterly towards her, writing in one case that that woman could ?talk? in spite of being told that no one on the mission cared to listen to that ?rubbish.?
What has been most fascinating, however, has been reading about their various pregnancies and labors.
By May 11, 2012
There are three exciting events happening in El Paso, Texas this summer, July 28, 2012. A little over a year ago I found myself thinking about the impending 100th anniversary of what has become known as the Mormon Exodus in 1912 which saw several thousand Euro-American Mormons from northern Mexico colonies leave their homes and take a train first to El Paso (where some remained) and then on to other areas of the country in response to their concern for their personal safety during the Mexican Revolution. Though some returned shortly after (and two of these colonies remain to the present), for the families of many such as George Romney (Mitt’s father), this migration represented the end of a decades-old sojourn in Mexico.
By May 9, 2012
Today, I am going to be attending the Community of Scholars program, sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan. Each year, the institute accepts a dozen or so students from across the university into a seminar to discuss the ways in which sexuality, gender, and race intersect in their work. My friends and I sometimes refer to it as feminist boot camp. The competition for acceptance into the seminar can be intense, especially for those students whose work is in fields that typically privilege gender as a category of analysis. A few months ago, Brittany Chapman and I were bemoaning the absence of a similar space for people interested in gender to discuss their work in Mormon Studies. Although female historians like Claudia Bushman, Jill Mulvay Derr, and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher began the process of unearthing a woman?s Mormon history decades ago, relatively little has been published in the field. Knowledge about the everyday lives of Mormon women ? the rituals surrounding childbirth, the difficulty in securing food and shelter during their husbands? absences as missionaries, the development of bonds between sister wives and children, the inspection of homes through Retrenchment Societies, and the ways in which they maintained contact with their families in the East, Great Britain, Scandinavia, and the Pacific ? remains fragmentary at best.
By May 8, 2012
(The following is cross-posted, with permission, from the stupendous blog Feminism and Religion. If you haven’t been reading their fascinating and sophisticated material, repent and bookmark their site today.)
Readers of FAR have been treated to a number of posts over the past few months from members of the ?Gendering Mormonism? class I taught this semester at Claremont Graduate University. I was fairly apprehensive in offering the course. For one, I?m not a scholar of gender, gender studies, feminist theory, feminist theology, queer studies, queer theology, or anything related?I?m a historian of American religion, and most of my training to that effect was about the white guys in American religion (most of whom, you?ll be shocked to learn, weren?t exactly feminists). I have also spent some time in international peace studies, where I got a crash course in issues of gender justice. But I entered this course as a relative novice. This is one of the fun things about being a member of a graduate faculty?as a professor I don?t have to pretend to be the fount of all wisdom all the time, and I learn a lot from students who are often more expert in a particular field than I am.
© 2026 – Juvenile Instructor
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