This coming Thursday, March 3, and Friday, March 4, there will be a Church History Symposium: Beyond Biography: Sources in Context for Mormon Women’s History. The Thursday events will be held at the BYU Conference Center in Provo and the Friday events will be at the Little Theater of the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. The best part? It’s totally free, no registration is required. See below for schedule or click this link for more information.
Thursday March 3
9:00–10:00 a.m.
Plenary Session
Sources in Mormon Women’s History
- Keith Erekson, Church History Library
10:15–11:30 a.m.
Concurrent Session 1
Session 1A: Expanding Approaches to Source Material
- Jenny Hale Pulsipher—Sifting Truth from Legend: Evaluating Sources for Native American Biography through the Life of Sally Exervia Ward
- Robin Scott Jensen—Documenting the Past: Women as Creators of the Manuscript History of the Church
- Janiece Johnson—Specters, Saviors, and Symbols: Women, Gender, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Session 1B: Stories in Words and Pictures
- Deidre Nicole Green—Claiming Agency through Narrative: The Sacred Stories of LDS Women
- Jennifer Brinkerhoff Platt—Pictures and Thousands of Words: A Case for Photo Elicitation among African Women
- Taunalyn Rutherford—Beyond Autobiography: Oral History and Mormon Women in India
Session 1C: Separate Spheres, Merging Spheres
- Gregory Seppi—“Her Knowledge of Business, and Practical Experience Therein”: Working Women in Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint Communities
- Casey Paul Griffiths—“I Felt I Was Perfectly Right and Voted Heartily for It”: Latter-day Saint Women in Politics During the Post-Manifesto Era
- Lisa Olsen Tait—The “Marriage” of the Young Woman’s Journal and the Improvement Era, circa 1929
Session 1D: Women and Theology
- Benjamin E. Park—Kings and Queens of the Kingdom: Gendering the Mormon Theological Narrative
- Jennifer Reeder—“To Expound Scriptures, and to Exhort the Church”: 19th-Century Mormon Women and Public Discourse
- Kathryn Shirts—Leah Widtsoe as Theologian: Constructing an Identity for Latter-day Saint Women in the 20th Century
11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Lunch Break
1:00–2:00 p.m.
Concurrent Session 2
Session 2A: “A Home Away from Home”: The Architectural and Historical Significance of the Beehive and Lion Houses to 20th-Century Young Women
- Presenters: Emily Utt and Brittany Chapman Nash
Session 2B: Women in Life and Death
- Sherilyn Farnes—“If Only I Had A Shaddow of [a] Chance I Felt Assured That I Could Overcome”: Life at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania
- Kris Wright—Mormon Women and the Material Culture of Death
Session 2C: Women and Liturgy
- Jonathan A. Stapley—Approaching Female Participation in Latter-day Saint Liturgy
- Richard Bennett and Wendy Top—Women Temple Workers in St. George, 1877
Session 2D: Responses to Feminism
- Mary Jane Woodger—Combating the “Too Broad, Too Vague, and Too Non-Definitive, Blanket Approach” to Finding Solutions for Women’s Issues: The Essential Barbara B. Smith and the Equal Rights Amendment
- Hannah Jung Kasenberg—Femininity, Feminism, and Straw Women: the Mormon Rhetorical Construction of Female Activists
2:15–3:30 p.m.
Concurrent Session 3
Session 3A: Women’s Records, Women’s Voices
- Janelle Higbee—“Acting in the Sphere Allotted”: What Relief Society Minute Books Reveal about the Place(s) of 19th-Century Mormon Women
- Maxine Hanks–Revisiting Relief Society Origins in Historical and Scriptural Context.
- Emily January Petersen—Beyond Biography: Using Technical and Professional Documentation to Contextualize Mormon Women’s Lives
Session 3B: On the Homefront: Families and Missionary Service
- Elizabeth Kuehn—Strong Women and Emotional Men: The Gendered Effect of Separation on Early Mormon Couples
- Julie K. Allen—“Now I Must Be as Both Father and Mother to These Small Ones”: Mine Jørgensen’s Letters to Her Missionary Husband, 1881–1883
- Jennifer L. Lund and Elizabeth O. Anderson—“We All Must Be Crasy”: The Plight of a 19th-Century Mormon Missionary’s Wife
Session 3C: Recovering and Integrating: Creative Approaches to Making Women Visible
- Matthew C. Godfrey—Financing the Prophet: Women’s Financial Contributions to Joseph Smith and the Church, 1833–1834
- James Goldberg, presented by Nicole Goldberg—Integrating Women into the Historical Narrative
- Ardis Parshall—Finding Women in the Sources: Case Studies
Session 3D: Women in Danger
- Andrea G. Radke-Moss—“Beyond Petticoats and Poultices”: Finding a Women’s History of the Mormon-Missouri War of 1838
- Amanda Hendrix-Komoto—“The Sounds of Blasphemy Are Not Heard in Our Streets”: Polygamy and the Response to Sexual Violence in Utah
- Joseph Stuart—“My Anguish Was Inexpressible”: Mormon Women, the Woodruff Manifesto, and Religious Disappointment”
3:45–4:45 p.m.
Concurrent Session 4
Session 4A: Oral History in Utah and Abroad
- Heather Stone—Remembering Membership: How Young LDS Women Constructed Social and Religious Position in the 1980s
- Caroline Kline—Navigating Gender, Negotiating Agency: Mexican Mormon Women’s Experiences and Self-Constructions in Oral Narratives
Session 4B: Sisters’ Stories
- Amy Harris—The Strange Case of the Browett Women: Maternal and Marital Status on the Mormon Frontier
- Richard E. Turley Jr.—Seven Sisters: Changing Expectations and Changing Lives among Latter-day Saint Women in the Western United States, 1967–1995
Session 4C: Narrating Women’s Lives
- Craig K. Manscill and Kenneth L. Alford—“Faith, Hope, and Charity Here Embodied Lies”: The Exemplary Life of Mercy Fielding Smith
- Barbara Morgan—Expanding LDS Women’s History Internationally: Maria Guadalupe Monroy
Session 4D: Spiritual Gifts, Religious Authority
- Christopher James Blythe—The Endurance of Charismata among Mormon Women in the Lion House
- Brooke Brassard—“Now There Are Diversities of Gifts, but the Same Spirit”: Mormon Women’s Exercise of Spiritual Gifts in Canada, 1887–1947
7:00–9:00 p.m.
Plenary Keynote Address
Individual Lives, Broader Contexts: Refashioning Narratives of American History and Historiography through Mormon Women
- R. Marie Griffith, Director and John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis
Friday, March 4
9:00–10:00 a.m.
Plenary Keynote Address
- Julie B. Beck, Relief Society General President, 2007-2012—Preserving the Heritage of Latter-day Saint Women
10:15–11:45 a.m.
Session 1
Women in Art and Culture
- Amy Easton-Flake—Constructing Self and Society: Literary Works in the Woman’s Exponent
- Heather Belnap Jensen—Pioneers in Paris: Mormon Women Artists, circa 1880–1920
- Josh Probert—Mormon Women’s Domestic Advice Literature, 1880–1920
11:45 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Lunch
1:00–2:15 p.m.
Session 2
Women in the Mission Field
- Matthew McBride—“An Ardent Desire to Speak for Myself”: Pioneering Woman Missionaries, 1898–1920
- Susan S. Rugh—The Calling with No Name: The Mission President’s Wife in the 20th Century
2:30–3:30 p.m.
Plenary Session
The First 50 Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History
- Presenters: Kate Holbrook, Matt Grow, Jill Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen