Eliza R. Snow's contributions as an educator have gone largely unexamined yet are an important element of her lifework. An analysis of her writing, both poetic and instructional, as well as minutes and notes from her instructional meetings, supports the view that as an educator Eliza R. Snow had a definite philosophy that informed her educational practice and shaped teaching and learning in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Two articles, one on the educational philosophy of Eliza R. Snow and the other on her pedagogical practices, illuminate her contributions as an educational leader. Snow believed that God's children were eternal and divinely endowed with the capacity to learn; that they were agents, free to choose; that to achieve eternal life their minds must be expanded and refined, transformed and perfected; and that capacity, greatness and usefulness were developed through improving oneself and through serving others. Snow's pedagogical practices derived from her philosophy and bridged nineteenth-century didacticism with an advocacy for learners as agents. In a time when most learning consisted of rote memorization and drill, Snow granted her students ownership in their own learning processes and used techniques that inspired children with eternal perspective. Snow's pedagogical patterns included moralizing to underscore important points, encouraging application or present-day connection, describing events or concepts unfamiliar to her audience, and editorializing with personal insights or experiences.

Settlement is a frequent topic in scholarly conversations about early American literature. From studies about William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation to Anne Bradstreet's poetry, settlement is a consistent theme in texts written by early Americans and in scholarship written by experts about early American texts. Settlement is also a major theme in the poetry written by Eliza R. Snow after fleeing with the Latter-day Saints from Missouri and settling in Nauvoo, Illinois. Both Bradstreet and Snow lived through settlement crises, crises that incorporated and exacerbated religious tensions within their communities eventually taking the form of the Antinomian Controversy and the Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844. The poetry left behind by Bradstreet and Snow is often an overlooked archive of historical sources that gives its readers insight into how these women responded to the crises within their communities and how feminine virtue played a role in their settlement crises. In light of this, in this paper I combine recent scholarship that focuses on Mormon settlement with scholarship that complicates the narratives about prominent women in Mormon history to unearth new insights into the lived experiences of Mormon women during settlement crisis. I borrow this move from scholars of early American history who have done this for a long time and have similarly uncovered new discoveries into the women that they study. Given that we now understand things that the Puritans did not fully--namely, that women are complex and that their historical images are often posthumously determined by archives (often controlled by powerful men)--I pay specific attention to the similarities of how settlement affects Puritan and Mormon women, both in their present-tense and in the historical narratives about them. Focusing on the intersection between settlement and women helps us to understand female writers, the way that women endured settlement, and the way that settlement affected the gender and overarching politics of their communities. Most notably, examining this intersection gives scholars insight into the ways that women writers--such as Anne Bradstreet and Eliza R. Snow--discipline their own narratives and leave behind poetical archives in order to be remembered as virtuous and well-behaved women, while the women who did not leave an archive are more susceptible to the narrative control of powerful men over historical archives.

This thesis will examine the surprising and delightful similarities between Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Eliza R. Snow's letters to the Woman's Exponent published in a book titled Correspondence of Palestine Tourists (1875). Snow traveled abroad from 1872-1873, five years after Twain went abroad in 1867 and three years after The Innocents Abroad was published. She clearly states in her early letters that she was reading Twain and his influence is apparent in her letters. A careful look at her letters will also show that they are not merely an imitation of Twain. Snow takes on a Twainian style to write for her audience, the Latter-day Saint women readers of the Woman's Exponent in Salt Lake City.Reading Snow's letters alongside Twain's The Innocents Abroad is beneficial in understanding the power and influence a popular text can have not only on other texts, but also on how writers describe their personal experiences. Marielle Maco states: 'Works take their place in ordinary life, leaving their marks and exerting a lasting power' 'Ways of Reading, Modes of Being,' 213). The lasting power of Twain's work is clearly shown here in Snow's letters.