Episode Details

This is a rebroadcast. The episode originally ran in August 2021.

Jenny Reeder is a historian and writer, currently the nineteenth-century women’s history specialist at the Church History Department in the publications division, and was one of the first historians hired to specialize in women’s history. She holds a PhD in American history from George Mason University, specializing in women’s history, religious history, memory, and material culture. She also holds degrees from Brigham Young University, Arizona State University, and New York University.

Jenny served a mission in Italy and has served three times as a ward Relief Society president, including when she was in graduate school and fighting leukemia. Jenny has collaborated on several books about Latter-day Saint women’s history and is the author of First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith.

Links

First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith
A Place to Belong: Reflections from Modern Latter-day Saint Women
The Witness of Women: Firsthand Experiences and Testimonies from the Restoration
At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women
Read the transcript of this podcast

Highlights

2:50 Writing her book about Emma Smith. Her goal was to write about her as a pillar of the Restoration and a significant founder of the Church with Joseph, and to make her a real woman and show how complicated her life was, her commitment, and her heartbreak.

5:20 So many members of the Church have been influenced to believe she was a fallen person because she did not come west with the other pioneers, but she retained her testimony and hers is a story of redemption.

7:45 Jenny’s experience with cancer while serving as a Relief Society president during her time in graduate school at George Mason

• Participating in ward council from her hospital bed
• Visiting with less-active people and learning to receive service
• Sending emails and physical cards to people as she was prompted
• Finding her purpose outside of “not dying”

15:15 Serving is an opportunity to learn, serve, and receive revelation in w