By Natalie RMarch 31, 2016
This is the third and final post in a series about Orrin Hatch’s role in the National Women’s History Week/Month in the context of the backdrop of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Last time when I left off, I intended to explore the process under which both Senator Orrin Hatch
Barbara Mikulski on Meet the Press, 1983
and then Representative Barbara Mikulski came to co-sponsor National Women?s History Week. This partnership is very curious given many of their seemingly diametrically opposed views. Mikulski was an advocate for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). In 2012, as a senator, she cosponsored a bill with others to reintroduce the amendment for ratification. Most of the news coverage I found that included both Orrin Hatch and Barbara Mikulski focused on the heated debate over the Equal Rights Amendment.
My working argument throughout this series has been that the co-sponsorship of National Women?s History Week was an effort to demonstrate bipartisanship during the otherwise contentious time concerning women?s rights during this period. I do not diminish Women?s History Week as a ?token? effort to show cooperation during this time, as it was a much-needed recognition during a time when other weeks and months were being set aside to celebrate the historical achievements of non-white men in power.
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By Natalie RMarch 23, 2016
Photo Courtesy of U.S. Senate Historical Office
Sen. Orrin Hatch speaks at one of his first Senate hearings. From SL Tribune
This is part 2 in a 3 part series about Women’s History Week/Month and Orrin Hatch.
The late 1970s and early 1980s was a time of transformative change for the women?s movement and American women?s political activism in general. From well-known feminists like Betty Friedan, who fought for the passage of the amendment, to Phyllis Schlafly, whose STOPERA campaign innervated once politically apathetic women to political action, the campaign for and against the Equal Rights Amendment demonstrated the power of women?s political mobilization to sway the American public opinion.
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By Natalie RMarch 10, 2016
This month is National Women?s History Month in the United States. The founding of women?s history week, which was later made a full month, can be read here. Integral to this celebration and recognition of women?s history was a Congressional Resolution for National Women?s History Week cosponsored by Representative Barbara Mikulski and Senator Orrin Hatch in 1981. The unlikely partnership of Hatch, a conservative of Mormon Utah, and Representative Mikulski, a democrat from Maryland, made many take notice. A 1982 article described the reaction including that of Gerda Lerner, the historian responsible for the first graduate programs in women?s history and author of seminal women?s history texts:
A resolution was pushed through Congress by two most unlikely allies, conservative Orrin Hatch and liberal Barbara Mikulski. A proclamation was then signed by President Reagan who commented: ?The many contributions of American women have at times been overlooked in the annals of American history.
This brought wry smiles from Gerda Lerner, the first female president of the Organization of American Historians. ?I can?t think what was in the minds of the people in Congress who sponsored it,? she said. ?I suppose it shows that supporting women?s efforts legitimize their own past something that is a nonpartisan endeavor if ever there was one.?
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By J StuartFebruary 27, 2016
BYU and the LDS Church History Library are hosting a conference this Thursday and Friday entitled, “Beyond Biography: Sources in Context for Mormon Women’s History.” The conference looks to be a major step forward for Mormon history by engaging Mormon Women’s history through a number of methodologies. There is no registration fee–if you’re in Utah you will want to be at the BYU or LDS Conference Center!
R. Marie Griffith and Julie B. Beck will deliver the plenary addresses.
JI-er presentations can be found below. You can view the rest of the schedule here.
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By Jenny RAugust 19, 2015
The Church History Department announces an opening for a research internship with the Women?s History Team. This will be a part-time, temporary position beginning in September 2015.
Qualifications
? Bachelor?s degree in history, religious studies, or related discipline, with preference given to those with master?s degrees and/or in doctoral programs.
? Possess excellent research and writing skills.
? Ability to work in a scholarly and professional environment.
? Requires both personal initiative and collaborative competence.
Please attach a vita to your application, and email a writing sample to: jreeder@ldschurch.org
Responsibilities
Duties will include research related to contextual annotation of documents (identifications and explanations, genealogical inquiries, and biographical information), as well as detailed source checking. Research will involve work in primary and secondary sources for nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and Mormonism. Work will include general assistance to authors.
Worthiness Qualification
Must be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and currently temple worthy.
Women’s History
Elizabeth Ann Whitney, Emmeline B. Wells, and Eliza R. Snow
By Andrea R-MApril 7, 2015
President Barack Obama met with LDS Church leaders on April 2, 2015, for a little under half an hour during a brief scheduled visit to Utah. In attendance were President Henry B. Eyring, Elder D. Todd Christofferson, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf and Elder L. Tom Perry here. President Thomas S. Monson was unable to attend the gathering due to health reasons, but online feedback also quickly picked up on the noticeable absence of any high-profile female leaders of the Church. Mormon women have not always been left out of presidential visits; in fact, various meetings between Relief Society leaders and American chief executives in the last 150 years are worth the retelling, and serve as a reminder of the stature and influence that elite Mormon women held in representing the Church to the nation.
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By J StuartApril 4, 2015
Friends of JI Rachel Cope and Lisa Tait are co-chairing a conference jointly sponsored by BYU’s Church History and Doctrine Department and the LDS Church History Department. The theme is sure to produce thoughtful and innovative papers. Please remember to send in your proposals by May 1, 2015. Better yet, why not sketch out your proposal now?
Beyond Biography:
Sources in Context for Mormon Women’s History
Scholars of Mormon women’s history have long demonstrated a commitment to and an interest in biography. The resulting narratives have helped to recover and preserve voices that would have otherwise been lost to modern awareness and have allowed us to sketch the outlines of Mormon women’s experience over the past two centuries. The 2016 Church History Symposium will build upon past biographical work and push our understanding forward by addressing the following questions: How might we employ archival and other sources to create more complete and complex pictures of Mormon women’s history? How might we consider what individual lives mean within their broader contexts? How will these approaches expand or recast our understanding of Mormon history?
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By Andrea R-MMarch 17, 2015
On this, the anniversary of the founding of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo on March 17, 1842, I come out of a long and silent hibernation from blogging to write this, a love letter, to my Relief Society sisters, for each one of you, whether in the church or out of the church, whether fully active or barely hanging on.
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By Farina KingJanuary 14, 2015
Julie K. Allen joined the Scandinavian Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006. She received her PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University in 2005. Her research focuses on questions of national and cultural identity in nineteenth and twentieth century Danish, German, and Scandinavian-American culture.
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By AmandaJanuary 7, 2015
2016 Church History Symposium
Beyond Biography: Sources in Context for Mormon Women’s History
March 3-4, 2016
Scholars of Mormon women’s history have long demonstrated a commitment to and an interest in biography. The resulting narratives have helped to recover and preserve voices that would have otherwise been lost to modern awareness and have allowed us to sketch the outlines of Mormon women’s experience over the past two centuries. The 2016 Church History Symposium will build upon past biographical work and push our understanding forward by addressing the following questions: How might we employ archival and other sources to create more complete and complex pictures of Mormon women’s history? How might we consider what individual lives mean within their broader contexts? How will these approaches expand or recast our understanding of Mormon history?
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