NOTE: Eric gave me permission to post this.

For my dissertation, I am looking for women who were LDS teenagers from 1975-2000 and who would be willing to share their remembrances. I want to talk to women who relocated as teenagers from a place where there were few Mormons to a place where Mormons were a majority, perhaps with their families or to attend college at Ricks or BYU.

I am specifically seeking participants who are no longer active LDS or who have a complicated relationship with Mormonism as adults.

Interviews can be scheduled by phone or in person at your convenience, and you get a transcript and recording for your personal records. If interested in participating, please fill out this quick survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdNrrIoPZauHqSxsgA8kOpVf7yakuwL3oKYratJIWF23Z24Kg/viewform?usp=sf_link

Feel free to share this survey link with anyone who might be interested. If questions, please email me at ywresearch@yahoo.com or reply to this message. I look forward to talking with you.

Heather Stone
Department of Communication
University of Utah

Took it, sent my contact info. Please leave a message if I don't answer so I can get back to you.

Thank you!

I've emailed you.

I replied. Thanks!

I was an LDS teenager during the 1970's. Although I went from predominantly Mormon communities, moving four times in four years, to four different high schools.

The first three were by and large made up of LDS student bodies. The school I did graduate from Mormons were a tiny minority there. I'm the reverse of what you're proposing for your study.

Best wishes in your endeavor.

I'm going to do a future study about people moving this direction (from Mormon-majority to Mormon-minority) so if you would like to be considered for that, still fill out the form. Thanks!

By the way, since some have asked, yes, you can participate anonymously. Any write-ups I do including my dissertation will be anonymous. You will pick a pseudonym and I will be careful not to use any identifying information. Then you can choose whether you want to include your story (audio and/or transcript) in the University of Utah library archive where I am donating the collection. If you don’t want yours to be included, no problem.

Thanks!
Heather

This looks interesting. I'm topping it.

Damn. I wish I was a woman so I could submit my story.

Seriously. Is there any comparable study for Mormon men, or is this part of a dissertation that focuses on women's studies or something?

I second that it sounds extremely interesting.

You can respond to the link in the OP. If the doctoral student can use your story or might want it for future reference, she'll get back to you.

I submitted mine as she indicated she may be using my criteria in a future study.

I would also like to know what her ultimate purpose is for gathering this information in addition to adding it to University holdings?

What are her objectives for the information gathering ultimately besides writing her dissertation?

Oh, and sorry to hog the board, but I forgot to explicitly answer Amyjo's question about whether I have any purpose beyond my dissertation. No, not at the moment. I am an organizational communication scholar, so I may go on to get an academic job in that space and publish an article or a book on my findings, depending on what I actually find. And I expect to keep doing interviews long after I've finished the dissertation because the topic interests me.

I am really interested in the difficulties of maintaining individuality while also trying to be part of a group, whether it is in classrooms, corporations, congregations, etc. So this research is a case study on that issue in Mormonism, since Mormonism seems to exacerbate some of those problems of individual vs. group because of its reach into so many areas of its members' lives, its strong regionalization, its proscribed and codified rules of conduct, and several other factors. And I'm talking to people who moved into a Mormon-majority community because I figured the moments when someone enters a new social group are when issues of inclusion/exclusion are most likely to emerge.

Other than that loose area of interest, my study is pretty open ended. As is often the case with oral history research, I'm just planning to go wherever the participants take me. I don't have a specific hypothesis to test and my research questions are big ones like "what messages did incoming young women receive from their peers when they moved into Mormon-majority communities" and stuff like that.

I am not sponsored by any organization, and I don't have any employment commitments or plans upon graduation, at least not at this point. I did get a small scholarship from the American West Center at the University of Utah to buy my recording equipment and their interest is in any research that furthers our understanding of the history of the American West, so that's pretty broad.

Oh, and I guess another thing to explain is why I am specifically looking for former or disaffected Mormons in this post. The reason is because though I have lots of applicants already, I do not yet have enough representation from folks who have left Mormonism as adults. And I think without that perspective, my study will be very incomplete. So I'm intentionally recruiting in that demographic so as to make sure I don't end up with a one-sided or incomplete narrative.

So, whew, that's probably more than you ever wanted to know. Thanks for your questions and your interest, everybody. I'm looking forward to hearing your stories now or in the future.

Heather

Hi there. You can still fill out the survey if you want. Just put that you are not a woman in the comments field of the survey. I think I will end up doing a study of men eventually and I could contact you then.

As for whether there is anything else going on like this, I haven't heard of anything. My study seems to be a bit off the beaten track because I am researching the difficulties of fitting into an organization and the cultural factors that make the practice of the organization's rules/behaviors different in different places. Most people who study Mormonism just straight up study a historical event or place rather than the way people interact and what they say to each other. But I'm a communication student, not a history student, so my approach is a little bit different.

So far the response from potential participants has been amazing--obviously I've struck a nerve because, dang, there are a lot of really interesting stories out there about how challenging/weird/different/offensive/whatever it was to move into Mormonville! I'm really looking forward to talking to so many people and seeing if I can get into words whatever it is that has made this so hard for so many people.

I'm hoping there is something to be learned about inclusion and exclusion and how people talk to each other that might in some small way make a difference in the world. Probably not, but hey, a girl can always hope.

Anyway, thanks for your encouraging words.

Heather

Any interest in talking to women who never moved to a mormon-heavy area? I fit all the other criteria, but I'd have gnawed my own leg off before I'd have been willing to move to Utah or Idaho.

That's a great visual. Please, no leg gnawing. :) Not worth it.

Yes, for a future study. Please fill out the survey and just note in the "anything else you want to say" field just what you said here. Then I will contact you for later phases of the research.

It's good to see post-LDS people will be included in academic research. I suggest doing a study about the long term effects on people whose bishops asked them intrusive sexual questions (such as about masturbation) when they were at a young and vulnerable age.

+1

I didn't get plied with those questions as a teenager until I became an unwed mother. Then it was everyone's business but my own, or so it seemed. :( Nor were we provided with any sex ed either at school or church, or home. It was off limits for discussion. No wonder we were in the dark!

As for the Mormon mythology messing with young minds, it was the "Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect," that tripped me up.

You can never be "too perfect." Especially after moving to Utah my junior year. It was there I developed an eating disorder, bulimia. A feeling of total loss of control over my body, myself, contributed to that malaise. Between the church basically manipulating me to giving up my child for adoption the year preceding that, and then expecting me to pretend that everything would revert back the way it was as before was just unrealistic.

I was thrown to the wolves by those with authority over me. They took my baby - that was all they wanted from me. Not my soul. Not my welfare. They were vultures.

Bulimia was my way of coping with the loss of my child, my autonomy, my power - as the church left me powerless after it got what it wanted from me and then hung me out to dry.

ETA: I outgrew the bulimia while in college. There was actually a non-credit class offered at my university for women suffering from eating disorders. It was a life changer!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2017 02:55AM by Amyjo.

That would my background, but I was a teen in the late 60s/early 70s. It was so fun to go from my little California town to Ricks College where literally everyone was LDS. First time in my life I wasn't the weird one or odd man out. We were ALL the weird ones so we didn't know any different.