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Next week, BYU and the History Department of the Church are hosting a free conference on women and Mormon History. Thursday will be at BYU in Provo, and Friday will bat the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City. Both events are open to the public–just show up. The program is available here.



On Thursday, I’ll be presenting a paper on women and Mormon liturgy. Unfortunately, it will be at the same time as Kris Wright’s paper on material culture and death. I was really looking forward to that. There will be a lot of missing cool sessions because there are so many good offerings presenting concurrently. For example you will have Jenny Reeder presenting on women and public discourse, and Andrea Radke-Moss on sexual violence during the Missouri war. Christopher Blythe and Brooke Brassard have papers on charismata. And that is just a sampling.

Instead of concurrent sessions, Friday will have a simple program, but still rich. I’m looking forward to former General Relief Society President Julie Beck’s Keynote address, and the final session with Kate Holbrook, Matt Grow, Jill Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen. These are the editors for the recently published volume comprised of documents from the first 50 years of Relief Society.

This book is sort of a big deal. You can read the Newsroom’s right-up here. I imagine that it is the only book sold on lds.org that was reviewed by Ann Braude, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Kathleen Flake, and Colleen McDannell. What’s more, you can access some of the documents from the newly released (and soon to be expanded) website of the Church Historian’s Press.

Hopefully we’ll see you next week.