By March 28, 2012
Mormon women are in trouble again. Not for selling out to the patriarchy or for working outside the home. Not for having too many or not enough kids. Not for wearing skinny jeans or peep-toe shoes. No, this time it?s for being overwhelming subscribers to an online bulletin board site called Pinterest.[i]
By March 26, 2012
So my adviser, Ann Taves, has approved my final “throughline” for me to send out to the rest of my committee. Let me clarify. The way Ann likes to do it, is for her students to write the initial prospectus, then do all the research and then write a second prospectus. She calls the second prospectus a “throughline” or a chapter by chapter detail of your arguments.
By March 25, 2012
In honor of Elder Jones?s late bedtime on 1900 May 27, this week I will discuss two aspects of missionary sleeping arrangements. How often did they share a bed? and How did they feel about it?
By March 20, 2012
David Pulsipher is a professor of history at Brigham Young University-Idaho. David was a 2007-2008 Fulbright scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia (University), in New Delhi, India. His research and scholarship focuses on peace and non-violence, and particularly how Mormons have appropriated and/or responded to these ideologies. He has presented papers at the Mormon History Association, Claremont Graduate University, BYU Studies Symposium, and the Congress of the Asian Political and International Studies Association. David is currently working on a volume of collected essays (co-edited with Patrick Mason and Richard Bushman) called War and Peace in Our Time: Mormon Perspectives; and a second co-authored book with Patrick Mason exploring a distinctively Mormon theology and ethic of peace. Please join us in giving David a warm and generous JI welcome.
In honor of women?s history month, we might remember an all-to-brief moment when Mormon women led in the public sphere and men followed—the ?Peace Meeting? movement. Given the prevalence of martial imagery and military heroes in contemporary Mormon culture, it is easy to forget that the Church officially endorsed and organized anti-war protests during the first decade of the twentieth century. These centrally directed and locally produced affairs were held annually—usually on or around May 18, to commemorate the first Hague Conference—and were no small productions. Meetinghouses were draped in international peace colors (gold, purple, and white). Ward choirs prepared and sang patriotic hymns and anti-war songs. Poems were specially composed and recited. Peace resolutions were adopted and signed. And ward leaders (male and female) disavowed war and called for international institutions for arbitration.
By March 18, 2012
Inspired by Ardis Parshall’s serial posting of the missionary diary of Willard Larson Jones at Keepapitchinin, I announce an occasional series on missionary life in the Southwestern States Mission around 1900.
By March 17, 2012
On March 8, 1927, the Deseret News published a piece about the upcoming visit of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a noted socialist and feminist.[1] Looking back, it is easy to assume that the piece would have been largely negative. Gilman?s most famous work is ?The Yellow Wallpaper,? which traces the growing madness of a young woman confined to her room because she has been diagnosed with hysterical tendencies. Forbidden from working or leaving the room without her husband?s permission, she develops a fixation with the wallpaper, which makes her think of ?all the yellow things? that she has ever seen ?not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.?[2] Eventually, she comes to believe that she lives within the wallpaper and refuses to leave the room when their summer rental expires. She gnaws at the bedposts and hides the key so that no one can force her out into the world where everything is too green. She ends up crawling on the floor, where she can place her shoulder against the wall, and be protected from losing her way. The room she once hated has become her sanctuary.
Gilman saw ?The Yellow Wallpaper” as a critique of the infantilization of women, the confinement of women to the home, and the treatment of the mentally ill and as such, the short story would be at odds with the current Mormon understanding of womanhood. Although Mormon husbands are unlikely to confine their wives to their rooms if they show signs of depression or ?hysteria,? Gilman would have critiqued the church?s emphasis on motherhood and domesticity to the exclusion of women?s work. Gilman believed that women should be able to enter professions and that those women who did perform housework should be paid for it in real, hard currency. Far from condemning Gilman, however, the 1920s Deseret News praised her. It told its readers that Gilman had come from a notable family, which included Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher, and that she had ?known intimately many of the greatest people of the world.?[3] The article also lauded Gilman for her efforts to secure women?s economic independence.
By March 13, 2012
Thanks to J. Stapley for his post contributing to Women’s History Month here at the Juvenile Instructor.
It has been a year or so since the article on female ritual healing that Kristine and I wrote was published (available here). In that time I have continued to gather sources relating to the topic as I come across them. Without looking particularly hard (once you start looking, references are ubiquitous), I have gathered seventy-four more examples and added them to the database. In the last couple weeks, however, I have found two that are fairly unique.
These two texts were both written by non-Mormon women for popular audiences.
By March 13, 2012
We might be a little late kicking off our Women?s History Month events here at the Juvenile Instructor. But our spirit is willing, and we still have sufficient time that we are pleased to offer your some significant contributions on Mormon women?s history from Jonathan Stapley, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, guest blogger David Pulsipher, myself, and others. National Women?s History Month should be even more important to Mormons, intersecting as it does with the yearly March anniversary of the founding of the female Relief Society of Nauvoo. While the latter is given varying degrees of attention depending upon the particular ward or branch and its available resources, the former is sometimes dismissed as a tool of feminist political correctness. Still, I think the correlation of the two provides unique opportunities for LDS scholars to broaden our understanding of women?s experiences in the past, and to look for new ways to honor their contributions, spirituality, and sociality.
By March 9, 2012
I’ll be teaching a seminar this fall on American religious pluralism and I need to submit my book adoptions soon. What’s hip, new and suitable for upper-level undergrads? Or, alternatively, what are the go-to classics? It will be a general course, not specifically on Mormonism, but I know this crowd would have good ideas, so I’m just throwing it open for suggestions.
Just to reminisce… when I took my undergrad American religion course from Steve Marini at Wellesley College (using the cross-registration bus provided by MIT), we used Stephen Allstrom’s Religious History. Good times.
Suggest away.
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