What would happen if you interviewed hundreds of Mormon women, asking them a few open-ended questions about their experience as Mormon women, and recording their responses for study at a prestigious university? And then you turned turned loose a dozen smart young scholars to work with these oral histories, finding and tying together some of the themes that the interviewees discussed, and writing about how these oral histories illuminate Mormon experience? And finally, what if you did all of this under the guidance of a few of the leading writers and scholars in the Mormon studies universe, and the entire oral history project was helmed by a sage and universally respected Mormon feminist pioneer, who also assembled the essay collection with the co-direction of a brilliant and proven rising star in Mormon feminism?

Well, that’s pretty simple. The result would be Mormon Women Have Their Say: Essays from the Claremont Oral History Collection. It’s a fantastic new addition to the Mormon feminist’s bookcase, and in this podcast, we talk about why.

Kaimi interviews volume editors Claudia Bushman and Caroline Kline and scholar Rachel Hunt Steenblik about the Claremont Oral History project, and about _Mormon women Have Their Say_. What does it mean for Mormon women to have their say? What are these women talking _about_? What do we learn when we talk to women in the community, and simply ask, “Tell me about your life. What are your opinions on various LDS female issues? And finally, what has been your experience in the Church?” The results, it turns out, can be eye-opening.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich once wrote that well-behaved women seldom make history. In this new volume, though, you’ll hear some of the histories of well-behaved women — and not-so-well-behaved women — as you’ve never heard them before. Join us for a podcast conversation about how this project changes the conversation about Mormon women’s experience, highlighted by some quotes from those women themselves.

(And if you’d like to participate in the oral history project yourself, please let us know, and we’ll put you in touch with the interviewers.)

Links:

Mormon Women Have Their Say: Essays from the Claremont Oral History Collection. (Amazon)

Mormon Women Have Their Say (page at Greg Kofford Books)

See also:

Jana Riess interviewing Claudia Bushman about the Oral History Project
Caroline and Rachel at Exponent Blog.
Julie’s review of _Mormon Women Have Their Say_ at Times and Seasons.

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