Description
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.
About the Author
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.
Book Information
ISBN 9781611479669
Author Rachel Cope
Format Paperback
Page Count 300
Imprint Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Publisher Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 223mm * 153mm * 23mm