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Performance has become a paradigm for analyzing contemporary culture, a pattern that structures a particular view of human interaction and experience. Performance is also widely used to better understand how we express values and ideas, including religious beliefs. Reckoning with Spirit in the Paradigm of Performance asks how the sensibilities of religious experience, which many people call spirituality, shape people's performance. When we observe people performing words, dances, music, and rituals they consider sacred, what (if any) conclusions can we draw about their experiences from what we see, read, and hear? By analyzing performances of spirituality and what people experience as "spirit," this book adds a new dimension to the paradigm of performance.

Rather than reducing the spiritual dimension to either biology or culture, the book asks what such experiences might have to offer a reasoned analysis of vernacular culture. The specific performances presented are meditative dance and shamanic drumming, including descriptions of these practices and exegesis of practitioners' writings on the nature of spiritual experience and performance.

A project of the Utah Women's History Association and cosponsored by the Utah State Historical Society, Paradigm or Paradox provides the first thorough survey of the complicated history of all Utah women. Some of the finest historians studying Utah examine the spectrum of significant social and cultural topics in the state's history that particularly have involved or affected women. The contents are as follows:
A Comparison of Utah Mormon Polygamous and Monogamous Women Jessie L. Embry and Lois Kelley

Innovation and Accommodation: the Legal Status of Women in Territorial Utah, 1847-96 Lisa Madsen Pearson and Carol Cornwall Madsen

Conflict and Contributions: Women in Utah Churches, 1847-1920 John Sillito

Utah's Ethnic Women Helen Z. Papanikolas

The Professionalization of Utah's Farm Women, 1890-1940 Cynthia Sturgis

Gainfully Employed Women in Utah Miriam B. Murphy

From Schoolmarm to State Superintendent: The Changing Role of Women in Utah Education, 1847-2004 Mary Clark and Patricia Lyn Scott

Scholarship, Service, and Sisterhood: Utah Women's Clubs and Associations, 1847-1977 Jill Mulvay Derr

Women of Letters in Utah Gary Topping

Utah Women in the Arts Martha Sontag Bradley-Evans

Women in Politics: Power in the Public Sphere Kathryn L. MacKay

Utah Women's Life Stages: 1850-1940 Jessie L. Embry