We were planning to announce this exciting project on Monday, but it goes so beautifully with Alisa’s post today, I couldn’t resist posting this a little early.
Exponent II is organizing an exhibit of Mormon women’s material culture for this year’s Sunstone Symposium to be held at Weber State University, August 3-6. The exhibit, Habits of Being: Mormon Women’s Material Culture will feature a photo-display of artifacts bequeathed to modern women by their female ancestors, accompanied by a short, 250-500 word essay describing the artifact and its significance. We plan to publish the essays in a small booklet and, if we receive too many responses to display, possibly online as well.
So much of women’s history is encoded in women’s possessions and creations, yet the stories of these items often go untold because they are not deemed to be as important as the events of institutional and world histories. Through this exhibit, we would like to explore how Mormon women today interact with their ancestral, religious, and material pasts. What does this interaction teach us about Mormon womanhood, past or present? What is the wisdom that has been imparted through material things and the stories women tell about them? We hope that the exhibit will open a conversation about how we use artifacts to define ourselves as women, to preserve past meanings and ways of being, and to create new meanings and ways of being. If anything, this is an opportunity for you to explore your own spiritual and material history and to contribute to Mormon women’s history.
If you have an artifact and story to tell, you are invited to participate! Please comment below and/or email [email protected] for further details about deadlines and what exactly we would need from you.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Pinborough (EXII staff and a blogger at Scholaristas) for coming up with and organizing this project!
