
Mormon Women's History
Beyond Biography
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Published on 29. November 2017
Book
Hardback
300 pages
978-1-61147-964-5 (ISBN)
Description
Mormon Women's History: Beyond Biography demonstrates that the history and experience of Mormon women is central to the history of Mormonism and to histories of American religion, politics, and culture. Yet the study of Mormon women has mostly been confined to biographies, family histories, and women's periodicals. The contributors to Mormon Women's History engage the vast breadth of sources left by Mormon women-journals, diaries, letters, family histories, and periodicals as well as art, poetry, material culture, theological treatises, and genealogical records-to read between the lines, reconstruct connections, recover voices, reveal meanings, and recast stories.
Mormon Women's History presents women as incredibly inter-connected. Familial ties of kinship are multiplied and stretched through the practice and memory of polygamy, social ties of community are overlaid with ancestral ethnic connections and local congregational assignments, fictive ties are woven through shared interests and collective memories of violence and trauma. Conversion to a new faith community unites and exposes the differences among Native Americans, Yankees, and Scandinavians. Lived experiences of marriage, motherhood, death, mourning, and widowhood are played out within contexts of expulsion and exile, rape and violence, transnational immigration, establishing "civilization" in a wilderness, and missionizing both to new neighbors and far away peoples. Gender defines, limits, and opens opportunities for private expression, public discourse, and popular culture. Cultural prejudices collide with doctrinal imperatives against backdrops of changing social norms, emerging professional identities, and developing ritualization and sacralization of lived religion.
The stories, experiences, and examples explored in Mormon Women's History are neither comprehensive nor conclusive, but rather suggestive of the ways that Mormon women's history can move beyond individual lives to enhance and inform larger historical narratives.
Mormon Women's History presents women as incredibly inter-connected. Familial ties of kinship are multiplied and stretched through the practice and memory of polygamy, social ties of community are overlaid with ancestral ethnic connections and local congregational assignments, fictive ties are woven through shared interests and collective memories of violence and trauma. Conversion to a new faith community unites and exposes the differences among Native Americans, Yankees, and Scandinavians. Lived experiences of marriage, motherhood, death, mourning, and widowhood are played out within contexts of expulsion and exile, rape and violence, transnational immigration, establishing "civilization" in a wilderness, and missionizing both to new neighbors and far away peoples. Gender defines, limits, and opens opportunities for private expression, public discourse, and popular culture. Cultural prejudices collide with doctrinal imperatives against backdrops of changing social norms, emerging professional identities, and developing ritualization and sacralization of lived religion.
The stories, experiences, and examples explored in Mormon Women's History are neither comprehensive nor conclusive, but rather suggestive of the ways that Mormon women's history can move beyond individual lives to enhance and inform larger historical narratives.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cranbury
United States
Publishing group
Associated University Presses
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
10 b/w photos;
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
644 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-61147-964-5 (9781611479645)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
11/2017
1st Edition
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,U.S.
€40.49
Available for download
Persons
Rachel Cope is associate professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University.
Amy Easton-Flake is assistant professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University.
Keith Erekson is director of the LDS Church History Library, associate member of the graduate faculty at The University of Texas at El Paso, and a member of the editorial advisory board of the Indiana Magazine of History.
Lisa Olsen Tait is a historian and writer specializing in women's history at the LDS Church History Department.
Amy Easton-Flake is assistant professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University.
Keith Erekson is director of the LDS Church History Library, associate member of the graduate faculty at The University of Texas at El Paso, and a member of the editorial advisory board of the Indiana Magazine of History.
Lisa Olsen Tait is a historian and writer specializing in women's history at the LDS Church History Department.
Content
Contents
Introduction
Rachel Cope
Chapter 1. Charting the Past and Future of Mormon Women's History
Keith A. Erekson
Chapter 2. Sifting Truth from Legend: Evaluating Sources for American Indian Biography
through the Life of Sally Exervia Ward
Jenny Hale Pulsipher
Chapter 3. Silent Memories of Missouri: Mormon Women and Men and Sexual Assault
in Group Memory and Religious Identity
Andrea G. Radke-Moss
Chapter 4. Early Mormonism's Expansive Family and the Browett Women
Amy Harris
Chapter 5. Poetry in the Woman's Exponent: Constructing Self & Society
Amy Easton-Flake
Chapter 6. Aesthetic Evangelism, Artistic Sisterhood, and the Gospel of Beauty:
Mormon Women Artists at Home and Abroad, ca. 1890-1920
Heather Belnap Jensen
Chapter 7. Leah Dunford Witdsoe, Alice Merril Horne, and the Sacralization of Artistic Taste in Mormon Homes, circa 1900
Josh E. Probert
Chapter 8. Double Jeopardy in Pleasant Grove: The Gendered and Cultural Challenges of
Being a Danish Mormon Missionary Gras
Introduction
Rachel Cope
Chapter 1. Charting the Past and Future of Mormon Women's History
Keith A. Erekson
Chapter 2. Sifting Truth from Legend: Evaluating Sources for American Indian Biography
through the Life of Sally Exervia Ward
Jenny Hale Pulsipher
Chapter 3. Silent Memories of Missouri: Mormon Women and Men and Sexual Assault
in Group Memory and Religious Identity
Andrea G. Radke-Moss
Chapter 4. Early Mormonism's Expansive Family and the Browett Women
Amy Harris
Chapter 5. Poetry in the Woman's Exponent: Constructing Self & Society
Amy Easton-Flake
Chapter 6. Aesthetic Evangelism, Artistic Sisterhood, and the Gospel of Beauty:
Mormon Women Artists at Home and Abroad, ca. 1890-1920
Heather Belnap Jensen
Chapter 7. Leah Dunford Witdsoe, Alice Merril Horne, and the Sacralization of Artistic Taste in Mormon Homes, circa 1900
Josh E. Probert
Chapter 8. Double Jeopardy in Pleasant Grove: The Gendered and Cultural Challenges of
Being a Danish Mormon Missionary Gras