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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Dreaming up a DH Research Agenda for Mormon Studies

On my spring break I took a one-day “staycation” to Day 1 of a local gathering of digital humanities scholars, hosted by the smart folks at Northeastern University’s NULab for Texts, Maps and Networks (http://nulab.neu.edu/, tweeting at @NUlabTMN). It was one of the best conferences I’ve been to – seemed like mainly literary scholars but also historians, librarians, and coders, and it involved a good blend of showcasing completely awesome ongoing initiatives, asking big existential questions about knowledge production, and teaching hands-on skills. Myself, I learned a bit about network analysis using Gephi (no relation to Nephi) and how to georeference a high-resolution historical map image using ArcGIS. I felt like a boss (as my students would say) by the day’s end.

And it got me thinking.

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Southwestern States Mission: Hymnbooks

Christus resurrexit!

Below are images of four pages from what the missionaries called ?the LDS hymnbook.? [1]

A Discussion with a National Women’s History Month Founder Molly Murphy MacGregor

While reading Ruth Rosen?s The World Split Open: How the Modern Women?s Movement Changed America as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York in 2003, I was shocked to discover that my own college played an integral in the development of National Women?s History Week, which became a full month in 1987,. What was even more startling to me was that I (and a majority of my fellow students) did not know about this significant piece of women?s history. As a graduate student in the women?s history program at Sarah Lawrence, I decided to write my master?s thesis on the college?s role in the development of National Women?s History Week.  During the process of writing my thesis, I fortunately, became acquainted with Molly Murphy MacGregor, a driving force behind the development of National Women?s History Week and the executive director of the National Women?s History Project. Over the years I have known MacGregor, I have been struck with how her early religious experiences as a Catholic child and young woman affected her activism and passion for women?s history. Her story is very similar to many women who have grapple with the conflicting aspects of a religious tradition that at times both venerates women but limits their leadership and agency as a church member.
1972 was a banner year for women?s history: Shirley Chisholm ran for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination and Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment and Title IX of the Higher Education Act. That year MacGregor was serving as a California high school teacher when a student asked about the woman?s movement. Having no answer, MacGregor strove to educate herself about women?s history and was shocked to find no suitable sources. In the following years, MacGregor began to work for the the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women when she and four other women came up with an idea for National Women?s History Week. In 1978, the commission in Sonoma County started a week in March dedicated to women?s history. The week containing March 8^th was chosen for that event as the date was and still is International Women?s Day. During the summer of the following year, MacGregor participated, along with other women leaders of organizations for women and girls, in a women’s history institute led by the historian Gerda Lerner at Sarah Lawrence College. As part of her application to the institute, MacGregor sent along information about the women?s history week in Sonoma county. The women involved in the institute decided to begin similar celebrations in their own communities and initiate an effort to have the week nationally recognized. The first signs of success arrived in 1980 when President Carter issued a the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the week of March 8, 1980 as National Women’s History Week  (full link to the first President Proclamation here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page). That same year Representative Barbara Mikulski and Senator Orrin Hatch co-sponsored a Congressional Resolution for National Women’s History Week to be recognized in 1981. In 1987, galvanized by the fact that fourteen states had already declared March as National Women?s History Month, MacGregor and other women led a lobbying effort to have the full month dedicated to women?s history. Finally in that year Congress declared that March would be national recognized as National Women?s History Month.

After getting to know Molly Murphy MacGregor as a graduate student and member of the National Women?s History Project board of directors, I was struck by how she was shaped by her Catholic childhood. Over the years as I have developed my own research interests in women?s and gender history, religion, feminism, and American history, I have often wanted to revisit this topic with her. I decided to give her a call and ask her a few questions. Growing up in 1950s and 1960s Los Angeles, MacGregor attended Catholic school all the way to the eighth grade and then she attended a public high school. Though she has since stopped practicing Catholicism, MacGregor credits the Catholic Church as well as her parents with inspiring her later activism and passion for women?s history.  Of her Catholic education, MacGregor states ?In terms of my catholic education, it had everything to do with believing to know, love, and serve God and each other. ..I grew up believing we were all connected though the mystical body of Christ.? Catholics believe that their church is united through the Mystical body of Christ and are guided by Christ, the head. MacGregor also explains that she would not have the ?social consciousness? she has now if it were not partly for being taught about the tradition and significance of standing up for what one believes in throughout her childhood and education.

While MacGregor was not particularly bothered by the lack of leadership position for roles for women within Catholicism (she recalled that the role of alter boy never appealed to her as a young girl), what was troublesome was a continual emphasis on death and the dichotomous view of heaven and hell. Because her father never became a Catholic and her parents married outside the church, MacGregor feared that when they died they would both burn in hell. After her father?s untimely death, when accompanying her mother to confession MacGregor was excited anticipating that her mother would finally be able to take communion (she did not partake in this part of the church servive as she had married outside of the church). Yet, when MacGregor was taken aback when her mother claimed that taking communion would not make any difference. To MacGregor?s mother, the church was not necessarily about the leadership in Rome but she would often say ?the church is the people?the people who show up there.? Her religious experience was deeply informed by her parents? counsel and example. She recounts how her brothers told her how a trip to the grocery store with her father often turned into an expedition that included dropping off food on porch of a family, who needed the help.

MacGregor?s leadership with the development of National Women?s History Month and the National Women?s History Project has led her to work with women from a variety of socioeconomic, cultural, and religious background. She attributes her work with these different individuals, including Mormon women, over the last forty years with continuously breaking her own stereotypes about those who are both dedicated to women?s rights and women?s history.  Though MacGregor eventually left the Catholic Church in the 1970s partly due to her participation with different political and activist movements, she is an example of why it is nearly impossible to ignore the salient connections between religious influence, activism, and history.

Mormon Studies Goes to Cambridge: Harvard Divinity School Hires David F. Holland

Okay, now that Harvard Divinity School made official the news that has been circulating for weeks, we at JI (and JI?s satellite branch in Cambridge) can pop the Martinelli’s. David Holland, currently an associate professor at UNLV, will be joining the HDS faculty starting this July as an associate professor of American religious history. (You can read the official HDS announcement here).

Until he came to Harvard for his job-talk and visit earlier this year, I only knew Prof. Holland through his groundbreaking work, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America (OUP, 2011). JI?s own Christopher provided an in-depth review when the book was first published, which I encourage all to read again. For those American religious historians (this aspiring one included) who are returning to sacred scriptures as a starting place for our analysis of both church history as well as history of the volk (both institutional, intellectual, and ?lived?), Sacred Borders is model scholarship.

During his visit to HDS, Holland proved that he?s not only a writer. His dynamic and innovative presentation on his current on ?editing? sacred texts was simply dazzling.

His students at UNLV have attested that he is also a great mentor, and many students at HDS have already benefited from his generous, critical (in both senses of the word), but always amiable suggestions on their work.

Congrats to HDS on a great hire!

Guidelines for (sister) missionaries

As a non-Mormon studying Mormons, I’ve been visited by my fair share of sister missionaries. I enjoy their visits and love hearing about their experiences, even if I have remained firmly unconvertable up till now. For that reason, when the new age restrictions for missionaries were announced last General Conference, and I read about the dress and grooming standards for missionaries, I was curious, and spent an hour or so browsing the site. For my contribution to Women’s History Month, I’d like to tie together some of my thoughts on that front.

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