2011 St. George, Utah Conference
Call for Papers
From Cotton to Cosmopolitan:
Local, National, and Global Transformations in Mormon History

The forty-sixth annual conference of the Mormon History Association will be held May 26-29, 2011, at the Dixie Center in St. George, Utah. The 2011 theme, “From Cotton to Cosmopolitan: Local, National, and Global Transformations in Mormon History,” evokes both the specific history of St. George and environs, and Mormonism as a religious tradition more generally. (more…)

JI bloggers invest significant amounts of time and effort in this blog, and this commitment becomes quite evident through the internal debates that sometimes occur behind the scenes as we discuss the future and purpose of this ever-changing form of new media in which we have become involved. Today we invite you behind the scenes to illustrate one of the great debates among historians today. In part, the discussions developed as many of us commented on Max’s excellent post on the proposed New York City mosque and community center, the debate about building it so close to Ground Zero, and how Mormons should react based on their shared history of religious persecution. Max adeptly historicized the issue of Mormons and the mosque in an effort to turn the overwhelming and sometimes baffling tide of Mormon opinion against its construction. (more…)

As you might be able to tell from my recent posts, I have recently been contemplating historical theory and the historian’s craft, especially as it relates to Mormon history. I am particularly interested in historiographic methods that have not, as of yet, been adopted in Mormon studies. (See here, for instance.) Today, after reading Jill Lepore’s evocative essay “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography,” I am contemplating the benefits of microhistory.[1] (more…)

Last year in a post here at JI, I explored the worship patterns of Latter-day Saints living in the American South at the turn of the twentieth century. I suggested that often times these ungathered Mormons, left to wade the waters of Mormonism on their own, without an ordained priesthood holder and consequently any real semblance of standard church organization and a regular meeting schedule, would often “supplement their Mormon worship by attending other denominations’ worship meetings in between visits from the itinerant elders.” Some Mormons thus attended Methodist camp meetings and Baptist church services on any given Sunday, though they retained their belief in the Mormon message and their membership as Latter-day Saints. (more…)

(This CFP was previously posted here in June. This is a reminder as the deadline quickly approaches)

Call for Papers

War and Peace in Our Time:

Mormon Perspectives (more…)

[What follows is the gist of the introduction from my paper "Celestial Family Organization: The Developing Nature of Mormon Conceptions of Heaven, circa 1840s," presented at the 2010 MHA Conference.]

This post begins with a seemingly unrelated starting point: the debate over the legacy of Kantian philosophy in 1790s Germany. Philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in defense of his interpretation of Kantian idealism, argued for a distinction between “the inventor” of an ideological system, and “his commentators and disciples.” Fichte explained,

The inventor of a system is one thing, and his commentators and disciples are another…The reason is this: The followers do not yet have the idea of the whole; for if they had it, they would not require to study the new system; they are obliged first to piece together this idea out of the parts that the inventor provides for them; [but] all these parts are in fact not wholly determined, rounded and polished in their minds…

Fichte continued by explaining “the inventor proceeds from the idea of the whole, in which all the parts are united, and sets for these parts individually…The business of the followers,” on the other hand, “is to synthesize what they still by no means possess, but are only to obtain by the synthesis.”[1]

The specifics of Kantian philosophy that Fichte was debating hold little importance to us, but the tension he outlines between an “inventor” and “disciple” plays an important correlating role in the development of early Mormon thought, just as it does with any movement that boasts an innovative founder. (more…)

After hearing this morning that Harry Reid has now entered into this vitriolic debate about the right to build a mosque (or the responsibility not to do so) where shadows of the Twin Towers once fell, my curiosity about how Mormons, both scholars and non, feel about this controversy, has bubbled over onto the virtual pages of JI. (more…)

As a grad student, one’s life is composed almost entirely with books. While all books are at least in some part formative of how one thinks and understands one’s field, most are somewhat forgettable beyond the pages of notes taken for future reference. However, every once in a while there’s a book that not only stands out from the rest but leaves a deep impression on how one views the historical craft. For me, Annette Gordon-Reed’s Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W. W. Norton & Company, 2008) is one of those books. (more…)

I recently came across a comment—made in passing and surely intended as nothing more than a kind compliment—that a young graduate student, not a Latter Day Saint (in any of its denominational manifestations) whose research focuses in part on Mormonism, was “the next Jan Shipps.” Such high praise got me thinking exactly what such a statement might mean, and (while it was indeed a compliment to this graduate student) whether Mormon Studies needs or wants another Jan Shipps. Let me explain. (more…)

I recently moved, and in the process spent some time going through the several boxes of papers (consisting mostly of photocopies of archival documents, papers written for courses as both an undergrad and grad student, and old syllabi) I’ve accumulated over the last few years. (more…)

We must be in the “dog days of summer,” as the blog has been rather slow of late. But I thought I’d point our readers to a great series that I just became aware of, called “The Future of Mormonism,” over at Patheos. It has several posts discussing different aspects of Mormonism, written by prominent scholars and bloggers. They’re all worth checking out: (more…)

I feel like I’m the bearer of bad news lately. It has come to my attention that George P. Lee, the most famous product of the great surge of LDS interest in Native Americans that defined much of the post-World War II era, died this week in Provo. (more…)

Peggy Pascoe, a leading historian of sexuality, gender and race relations in the American West, recently passed away after a bout with ovarian cancer. Her research and career path resulted in a few Mormon connections. Pascoe’s first major work, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939 examined Protestant female missionaries who established homes throughout the West to “reform” and help wayward women. One of her case studies included a home set up in Salt Lake City to help Mormon women who wished to escape from polygamy. The book remains one of the most influential and important books published on women in the West. Pascoe also published her magisterial What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, which treated miscegenation law broadly from Reconstruction through the late 20th century. Although What Comes Naturally does not include discussions of Mormons, the work includes important information that contextualizes our own troubled history with intermarriage. Pascoe’s other Mormon connection comes from her having taught at the University of Utah for a decade from 1986 to 1996. She’ll be missed.

A friend alerted me not too long ago to an effort by a local in San Antonio, Texas to document the history of the LDS Church in his city.  The site is called, The Saints of San Antonio: A Video History in Their Own Words. (more…)

As promised, former JI blogger Elizabeth has teamed up with two other bright and thoughtful young historians of American religion to create a new and sorely needed blog. We are pleased to announce and endorse Scholaristas, a blog devoted to the study of women’s religious history by women. The bloggers describe themselves and their blog as follows:

(more…)

“The Intellectual Prospects for Mormonism”: The Third Biennial Faith and Knowledge Conference for LDS Graduate Students in Religion

Duke University/University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
February 2011

The Faith and Knowledge conference series was established in 2006 to bring together LDS graduate students in religious studies and related disciplines in order to explore the intellectual interactions between religious faith and scholarship. In past conferences, graduate students have been invited to reflect upon aspects of their own personal intellectual reconciliations—or their own failures to do so—between church and academy, and to offer fruitful solutions to fellow students undergoing similar intellectual journeys. (more…)

Desidrius Erasmus was the most learned man of his day and in the spirit of the Renaissance he sought to get back to the original sources of wisdom (often called Christian Humanism). For Esasmus this meant the Fathers over the Scholastics, Origin over Augustine and, of course, the Greek Bible (which he translated into Latin) over all. Said Erasmus (in a 16th century English translation) “I wold to god they were translated in to the tonges of all men, so that they might not only be read and knowne of the scotes and yrishmen, but also of the Turkes and sarracenes … I wold to god the plowman wold singe a texte of the scripture at his plowbeme.” [1]

This sentiment tends to be credited to William Tyndale the father of the English Bible: (more…)

Read more here.

Without the full text* it is hard to assess the totality of what Elder Jensen sought to convey, but the report suggests a deviation from the standard Pioneer Day fare and an effort to reach out a hand of compassion and remembrance to those that are so often the forgotten or misremembered [see yesterday's excellent post by David G. on Pioneer Day and remembering/forgetting Utah's Indian Wars] in Utah Pioneer history. One section from the report stands out to me: (more…)

On Pioneer Day in 1941, the Provo branch of the Sons and Daughters of the Utah Pioneers erected a monument to honor the Ute Chief Sowiette for the aid he gave to Mormon settlements in early territorial Utah. The monument, which stands at the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum in Provo, has the following inscription: (more…)

For my nightly and Sunday reading, I’ve recently decided to read academic biographies of Latter-day Saints. I’ve now finished Ron Walker’s Qualities That Count: Heber J. Grant as Businessman, Missionary, and Apostle, Arrington’s Brigham Young: American Moses, Brooks’ John D. Lee: Zealot, Pioneer, Builder, Scapegoat, Scott R. Christensen’s Sagwitch: Shoshone Chieftan, Mormon Elder, 1822-1887, and I’m currently working through Allen’s No Toil Nor Labor Fear: The Story of William Clayton. While I’ve enjoyed all of them, I think Allen’s is an extraordinary piece of scholarship, solidly researched and engagingly written. Aside from Bushman and Prince’s bios of JS and DOM, which I assume most JI readers are familiar with, what do y’all think are the “best LDS biographies”? For my purposes, I’m interested in works written by academic historians that are both well researched and written, rather than more devotional examples like George Q. Cannon’s JS bio.