Jenny Reeder

History has told us very little about women; judging from its pages, one would suppose their lives were insignificant and their opinions worthless. . . . But although the historians of the past have been neglectful of women, and it is the exception if she be mentioned at all, yet the future will deal more generously with womankind, and the historians of the present age will find it very embarrassing to ignore woman in the records of the nineteenth century. –Emmeline B. Wells, “Self-Made Women,” 1881

I shall try to present them in their terms and judge them in mine. That I do not accept the faith that possessed them does not mean I doubt their frequent devotion and heroism in its service. Especially their women. Their women were incredible. –Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail, 1964

The history of the women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as Mormons, is rich and complex. Family, friends, community, and church were their binding force. Mormonwomenhistory.org aims to provide a meeting point for information relating to that history. Primary documents illustrate various experiences, both individual and institutional, with links to secondary analysis. A detailed timeline and brief biographies of both well-known and lesser-known women illustrates the complexity, the social network, the political and cultural activity, and the far-reaching influence of women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their national and international contexts. And a forum creates a virtual community of scholars and the interested public. Continue reading →

I have created a website using HTML (1) and CSS (2). I registered a domain and a host account (3) with CHNM. I also threw in a little Javascript (4) with my Simile timeline. With some special help from a few friends, I’ve embarked on a project that I hope will continue well past this semester. While I’ve pulled this together for now, I expect to put in a lot more work and time to expand each page with additional information, images, documents, etc. I’ve got colleagues who are eager to add to the site and publicize it in multiple forums. We’ll see what happens…

The magical site is www.mormonwomenhistory.org

After taking the STAR Photoshop class, I have fiddled around with a few digital images.

Original version: notice tree in the middle and sort of double exposure of nurses on the right classof-1910-1912.pdf

Cleaned up version: Points to those who figure out the two arms I had to copy and paste onto the nurses whose arms were totally distorted, and from whom they came… I left the ghost woman in the window on the upper left… 2classof-1910-1912.pdf

Here’s another go at it–this one is an old letter that I had as a scanned photocopy. I saved it as a pdf, then photoshopped it. Old: 1886-letter.pdf New: 1886-letter2.pdf.

And, for the sake of my 7-year-old nephew in Parker, Colorado, who asked me to help him out with a Flat Stanley project, I utilized my photoshop skills as seen here:

Blogs, blogs, and more blogs. I have obviously created this blog, and I’ve actually been so taken in by the blog excitement that I’ve created a personal, non-academic blog, found here.

I’ve also started a family history blog for all the family history we’ve done. Now, when I say started it, I mean that I have all the ideas and such, but not much has been posted. I plan on working with my mom’s cousin who has tons of stuff to work with on our genealogy. It’s going to be great.

I am a big believer in Zotero.  And it’s not just because I’ve worked on it at CHNM. I think that it really is the wave of the future. I’m just glad I’ve learned about it at this point in my doctoral education and academic career.

I usually underline and heavily annotate my books while I read. I have started to create a summary of each chapter in the back of the book, and notes from book reviews in the front. But I have not had an in-depth program to collect all this data.

I have created my own Zotero collection with folders on American history, Women’s history, Religious history, and Mormon history, with a sub-folder on Mormon women’s history. I have also created folders for every class I have taken, both in my MA program at NYU and here at Mason. I have added notes to each book with the first note giving a brief summary of the book and additional summary notes for each chapter. Sometimes I’ve even included a note with notes from book reviews.

I think these notes and tags will allow me to prepare for my orals and minor field statements as well as provide important bibliographic information for writing papers and chapters for my dissertation. I think this will save me incredible amounts of time and energy. I’ve already gone back and entered in quite a few books from past readings

I have GOT to stop looking at Wikipedia! I just rechecked the wiki I edited previously this semester and found new errors, so I spent some time re-editing and adding in new sources and additional information. Check out the entry for Eliza R. Snow.

I also went to one of the links on the Eliza R. Snow page–the Relief Society–and made a few changes. I could tell that someone had worked on both because they had the same phrases. This entry I thought was much better written with more detail.

Now I want to go edit the other links. . . and add more. . . and take over all wikipedia entries on Mormon women. . . Part of me would rather invest this time into my own website, but I feel like wikipedia deserves attention because it’ll receive more traffic than my site. One day, though, they’ll all link to me…