English major Maiya Johnson applies her research topic to help spotlight platforms for voices of queer women in the LDS Church

By Emily Wilmot

The President’s Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence annually highlights exemplary Florida State University undergraduate students and their academic research projects. IDEA Grants from FSU’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Academic Engagement fund the student’s findings, which are displayed at the showcase as an oral or poster presentation.

At the Oct. 10 event, Maiya Johnson delivered her oral presentation, “Hearing the Unheard: Understanding the Lived Religious Experiences of Queer LDS Women in Utah,” which documents perspectives from queer Latter Day Saints women and the mental health professionals who work with and provide a space for them. Johnson discussed how their stories are often ignored and silenced.

She spent time during the summer of 2024 in Salt Lake City to create a platform for their voices.

“I grew up Mormon. I officially left the church when I moved to college,” Johnson says. “I am a queer woman, and I came out when I got to college, so I was figuring out how my Mormon past was coinciding with my queer present and future and how I was going to deal with that.”

One of Johnson’s advisors for her project, Associate Professor of Religion Joseph Hellweg, talks highly about his time working with her.

“Maiya is a remarkable student who has managed to join her commitment to academic achievement to the service of making the world a better place for queer women like herself,” he says. “Her desire to learn is infectious and inspiring. It's a great pleasure to work in tandem with my colleague Sonia Hazard as a co-advisor on Maiya's honors in the major thesis.”

The 2024 President’s Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence is a dedication to the work students have completed for their projects. Participants demonstrate their contributions to both Florida State University and the research community as a whole.

Johnson is currently a third-year student with a double major in English-Editing, Writing, and Media and in religion. In fact, Johnson says she chose to attend FSU for the English department’s EWM curriculum.

“I love editing, and I love rhetoric and composition that [answers questions such as] how does English function? What are the affordances and constraints of certain types of things in English? That’s why I chose to be an EWM major because I love that side of English,” says Johnson, who added religion as her second major after she started her English studies.

After arriving on FSU’s campus, Johnson took an elective during her first year that threw her into the research topic, which earned her an IDEA Grant. English Assistant Professor Trinyan Paulsen Mariano offered a literature of human rights course where Johnson was assigned a paper on a localized human rights issue.

“She really pushed me toward looking at the oppression of queer women in the LDS church, which is kind of how this whole thing got started,” Johnson says.

Johnson’s personal experiences added to her academic interest and attention to the topic. The paper’s focus snowballed into something more than her original idea when Johnson was unable to find what she was looking for in archives and databases for studies that other people had done.

“I couldn’t find anything on queer women specifically, which was very frustrating to me,” Johnson says. “I found a lot of information about the experiences of queer men in the church, or a more generalized queer people, but nothing focused on the experiences of queer women.

“And so, I thought, ‘If there’s nothing in the databases about these people, I’m going to do the research.’”

Johnson started her research with more basic ideas but eventually concluded that her scope had to be expanded. With the IDEA Grant and a great amount of support from both the English and religion departments, she found the necessary people to interview to move the project forward. Read Johnson's Honors, Scholars, and Fellows House Blog post for more information about her experience leading up to the Showcase

“I was put into contact with a long chain of people, the most important being Dr. Lisa Hansen at Flourish Therapy, a mental health clinic that provides affordable and accessible mental health care for LGBTQ+ individuals across Utah,” Johnson says. “I interviewed many of the therapists or social workers at Flourish and some of the clients. It was really cool interacting with a network of people who value mental health care in Utah and queer people that benefit from that care.”

Those conversations raised several questions for Johnson: “How are queer Mormon women staying Mormon? Are they leaving the church? If they are leaving, where are they going? Who are they connecting with? What are the queer networks in Utah?”

From those questions, Johnson discovered that queer women were finding each other through groups that focused on providing resources for them.

“There’s a giant underground queer network that queer women are engaged in,” Johnson explains. “The majority of the women that I talked to had left the church but then transitioned into these LGBTQ+ organizations that support them and their lived religious experiences alongside their queer identity.”

Johnson says her experiences in research have not only encouraged her to ask questions but also to communicate the answers effectively.

“It’s definitely improved my writing skills by 1,000,000 percent because I have to be writing every single day in the process of conducting my research about something I really care about,” says Johnson. “This is close to home for me, and I think it’s important in the broader Mormon studies network. Being able to sit down and write about something that I care about has made me a much better writer and editor.”

The project has also helped her take the first steps toward her career after she graduates from FSU.

“I really want to be talking about Mormon studies and queer and genderqueer people in the church,” Johnson says. “That’s what I want to focus on and do my research on. Having this opportunity as an undergrad to dip my toe into the research community has been immensely helpful in setting up my career.”

After finishing her undergraduate degrees, Johnson says she wants to earn her doctorate in American Religious History with a concentration in Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Emily Wilmot is an English-Editing, Writing, and Media major, with a minor in economics.

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