Real name:
Biography:
Elisa Pulido graduated in 2015 from Claremont Graduate University with a PhD in Religious Studies. Her first book, The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista: Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident, and Utopian Founder, 1878-1961, was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. In 2021 it won best biography awards with the Mormon History Association and the John Whitmer Historical Society. She has taught adjunct courses in World Religions at Brigham Young University, and Religious Studies at Claremont Graduate University. She is currently an Independent Researcher whose interest lie at the intersection between Race, Gender, and Religion. Her current qualitative research project focuses on divorce, stigma, and disaffiliation in American Religions.
Current research areas:
Gender and Religion, Race and Religion, Religion in North America, Religion in Latin America, Mormon Studies, and Comparative Religious Studies
Recent scholarly activity:
From 2019-2022,, I was a Visiting Scholar in the Religious Studies Department of Claremont Graduate University where I researched the nearly 200-year history of artistic depictions of Joseph Smith’s gold plates for a forthcoming book by Richard Bushman. I wrote and published an online essay on the 150-year history of Mormonism in Mexico for the Religion Department’s “Migration and Immigration” website. I also researched, wrote, and published an article for Mormon Studies Review on the influence of anticlerical measures in the Mexican Constitution of 1917 on native Mormon converts in Mexico. In addition, I helped CGU acquire 90 linear feet of primary documents on the history of Mormonism in Mexico for the new Fernando and Enriqueta Gomez Collection at Honnold Library. I subsequenty team taught (Spring semester 2022) “Mormonism in Mexico” to graduate Archival Studies students cataloging those documents in advance of an NEH-funded symposium on Mormonism in Mexico, for which I led a session on Margarito Bautista's magnum opus on the spiritual history of the Mexicans.
August 2022, I earned a certificate in Oral History from the Science History Institute.
Recent publications:
“Margarito Bautista, Mexican Politics and The Third Convention.” In Mormon Studies Review, January 2021.
The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista: Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident, and Utopian Founder, 1878-1961, Oxford University Press, March 2020.
Book Review, Richard Turley and Clayton Christensen, An Apostolic Journey: Stephen L. Richard’s 1946 Journey to South America. In BYU Studies, Spring 2020.
“The History of Mormonism in Mexico.” Immigration and Migration, Mormon Studies website, Claremont Graduate University. January 2020.
Book Review, F. Lamond Tullis’s Martyrs in Mexico. In Journal of Mormon History, Mormon History Association, Fall 2019.
Book Review, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A House Full of Females. In Journal of Women’s Studies. Claremont Graduate University, Fall 2018.
“Teaching Jain Principles in the Home: Accounts from Jain Female Householders.” In Transactions: Journal of the International School of Jain Studies, Alipur, India. October 2018.
Forthcoming research:
“Writing Bautista.” In Mormon Historians Writing History, vol. 2. Edited by Joseph Geisner (Salt Lake City: Signature Books). Forthcoming.