Item Detail
-
33037
-
1
-
17
-
English
-
Intimate Exposure: The Charley Douglass Daguerreotype and American Religious History
-
John Whitmer Historical Association Journal
-
March 2023
-
43
-
1
-
20-40
-
This article discusses a daguerreotype of Elvira Eliza Field, who disguised herself as a man in order to conceal her marriage to James Strang.
"My attention to Strang’s movement was captured and maintained because of the material visual image. It was the daguerreotype that led me to read the primary sources to understand how the cross-dressed first plural wife fit into the larger story of the religious movement. The image then prompted me to relate Field to other nineteenth-century cross-dressing women who photographed themselves and to think more systematically about how being perceived as a man allows women to participate in male ritual practices. Furthermore, the image directed me to incorporate in my analysis the role of material objects and visual culture in the founding of Strang’s movement. Finally, just as a camera captures only a portion of reality and directs the viewer to a particular point, I have come to recognize that my focus on six months is in a sense a similar distortion. Field lived for eighty years but lived as a woman in Strang’s Mormon group for only about six years and as a man for six months. That narrow view captures an extraordinary moment that certainly might distort my vision. And yet, the photograph continues to direct my research. The archive where it resides—the collection and the absences in collection—actively shapes the story that I tell. This complicated relationship, always nurtured by conjecture and imagination, expanded my understanding of the radical meaning of Field’s body. Although I am convinced that this daguerreotype is indeed Elvira Eliza Field, ultimately what matters is not whether the photograph can be authenticated. It is the power of the image to direct interpretive choices, especially when there is ambiguity in the archives. The study of all forms of material religion will be enriched as more scholars investigate their complicated relationship with the archives in which they work, specifically paying attention to the generative ways that material objects actively direct their--and our—research." [Author] -
America's Only King Made Beaver Island His Promised Land
Circulating Specters: Mormon Reading Networks, Vision, and Optical Media
From Strangites to Reorganized Latter-day Saints : Transformations in Midwestern Mormonism, 1856-79
"God Has Made Us a Kingdom" : James Strang and the Midwest Mormons
Hidden Things Shall Come to Light: The Visual Image of Joseph Smith Jr.
"In Love and Union": The Writings of Mr. Charles J. Douglass, Secret Plural Wife of a Mormon King
James Jesse Strang : The Rise and Fall of Michigan's Mormon King
King of Beaver Island : The Life and Assassination of James Jesse Strang
King Strang : A biography of James Jesse Strang
Mormons Seeking Mormonism : Strangite Success and the Conceptualization of Mormon Ideology, 1844-50
Polygamy among James Strang and His Followers
Religion and Sexuality : The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community
Scattering of the Saints : Schism within Mormonism
The Coronation of James J. Strang and the Making of Beaver Island Mormonism
The Kingdom of Saint James : A Narrative of the Mormons
The King Strang Story : A Vindication of James J. Strang, the Beaver Island Mormon King
The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844