Joanna Brooks is chair and associate professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. Recently, Joanna co-organized the “Our Voices, Our Visions” Mormon women’s literary tour with Holly Welker and writes dynamic creative nonfiction in addition to publishing academically. She writes a regular column, “Ask Mormon Girl,” at Mormon Matters. (more…)

Two new blogs launched yesterday (for all intents and purposes).

The first, Browsing The Stacks: A Mormon Book Collecting Blog, will be an exploration of rare and collectible Mormon books. At the JI we talk about books in terms of their historiographical value. At BTS, we’ll talk about books more in terms of collectibility (and thus, sometimes $$ value : ). (more…)

Admin: Thanks to Jacob B. for this run-down of the recent Claremont Mormon Studies Conference.

This last Friday and Saturday (April 23-24, 2010) the Claremont Mormon Studies Student Association held our biennial student conference at Claremont Graduate University. This year’s theme: What is Mormon Studies?

Ben recently asked me to review the conference. This was an excellent idea, and I wish I had had the presence of mind to take better notes in anticipation of a more thorough review. But I’ll try my best. I will make a few preliminary remarks first and then provide a summary of the presenters’ remarks, concluding with my final thoughts and impressions. My summaries will be mixes of the presenters’ papers and my thoughts and reflections. I frankly can’t do justice to the conference proceedings here but we’ll have 12 hours worth of video up at our website soon, where you can compare the proceedings against the actual accuracy of this review. We are also producing an on-demand DVD of the conference. The papers will likely be published in some forum as well. (more…)

I’ll be quoting the “In This Issue” section and then, with the kind permission of the UHQ editorial staff, I will be reproducing here my review of Lu Ann Taylor and Phillip A. Snyder, eds. Post-Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899-1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff which appears in this issue. I reproduce it partially because it was printed with an error in one of my parenthetical references. The reference as published is, “(see Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage, 372).” What I wrote was, “(see Carmon Hardy, Doing The Works of Abraham: Its Origin, Practice, and Demise, 372).” (more…)

Our third participant in this series, Jennifer Lane, is associate professor of Religious Education at BYU–Hawaii, where she has taught since 2002. She recently presented a paper titled “Subjection, Mastery, and Discipleship” at the seventh annual meeting of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. Jennifer’s interview reflects an academic path that has had some unexpected turns. However, along the way she has been supported by remarkable scholars, both male and female. She looks forward to responding to your questions and comments. (more…)

Juvenile Instructor readers will be interested in the recently-launched group blog, Religion in the American West. (more…)

[In the spirit of transparency, I admit that what follows is an attempt to use the JI as a sounding board for ideas from my upcoming MHA presentation. Critiques are greatly appreciated.]

In 1787, after spending the last two decades of his life working toward American independence and a new form of democratic government, Benjamin Franklin noted that “there is a natural inclination in mankind for a kingly government.”[1] He was speaking in Philadelphia to the framers of the Constitution, many of whom had grown disillusioned with the potential for radical social movement the early American republic had experienced, and envisioned their own natural aristocracy as the pinnacle of society.[2] Less than a half-decade later, Philadelphia became the location of the most recent of at least a dozen publications of the satirical novel The History and Adventures of Joseph Andrews. Written by British author Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews mocked the aristocratic foundations of the eighteenth century, especially its “whole ladder of dependence,” and the novel’s printing success in post-Revolutionary America demonstrates the culture’s acceptance of radical Whig philosophy that revolted against a fixed social status.[3] (more…)

For those of you who don’t subscribe to American Historical Review, you missed out on a wonderful treat in their first issue of this year. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, pulitzer-prize winning historian and professor at Harvard University, published some of the earliest fruits from her recent work on Mormon history in the nineteenth century (for more background on Ulrich, see here). (more…)

In September of last year, I blogged about recent biblical scholarship that attempts to unlock the riddles presented by Genesis 9, which describes Noah’s curse upon his grandson, Canaan. Based on the work of John Sietze Bersgma and Scott Walker Hahn, (more…)

My grandmother is on my mind. (more…)

From Mark Ashurst-McGee:

Historian/Documentary Editor, Joseph Smith Papers Website-1000209

Description

The Joseph Smith Papers is engaged in producing a comprehensive electronic edition of Joseph Smith documents featuring complete and accurate transcripts with both textual and contextual annotation for publication at the josephsmithpapers.org website.  (Publication in letterpress form of selected document series will complement the website.)  The scope of the project includes Joseph Smith’s original correspondence, revelations, journals, historical writings, sermons, legal papers, and other documents.  Besides providing the most comprehensive record of early Latter-day Saint history they will also provide insight into the broader religious landscape of the early American republic.  The Joseph Smith Papers Project is ready to hire a historian/documentary editor with the appropriate academic training, research and writings skills, and technological acumen to edit Joseph Smith’s papers. (more…)

Part IV in the JI’s ongoing series on secularism and religious education

I feel honored (and intimidated) to continue a worthwhile discussion on the relationship between secularism and religion in academia. While Taylor, Matt, and Ryan have each provided poignant contributions that explore the ideas, tensions, and environments of this issue, my post is designed more as a reflection on my own experience. (more…)

Spend an Evening with an Author

We are excited to announce the arrival of Hearken, O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith’s Ohio Revelations by Mark L. Staker, published by Greg Kofford Books. We will have the author at our store to speak about and sign his book on Wednesday, April 14, 2010. Mark will be here from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., speaking at 6:00, and will answer questions and sign books before and after that time. (more…)

Hot off the press. (Or, passed along from JI’s friend Jacob B.) This looks fantastic.

What is Mormon Studies?

Transdisciplinary Inquiries into an Emerging Field

Claremont Mormon Studies Student Association

Spring 2010 Conference (more…)

The Salt Lake Mormon Studies Student Association will host BCCer Jonathan Stapley on April 8, 2010 at 7 pm for a public lecture entitled, “All These Years an Orphan”: Ritual Adoption in Mormon Theology and Practice. (more…)

Part III in the JI’s ongoing series on secularism and religious education

In sifting through the thoughts that might be relevant to bring to this conversation, it quickly became clear that I wouldn’t be able to form any kind of comprehensive, useful model, or to get the satisfaction that comes with being able to see something as a whole. The differences that Matt articulated in the last post of the series run deep, and seem to impose considerable gulfs between all kinds of people that might try to talk about religion: we occupy largely different worlds. I also came to realize that the blog post is not terribly well suited to interdisciplinary analysis! All I can do here, I think, is try to illuminate a point of contact between the three broad categories we have been discussing – secularism, religion, and education. (more…)

While reading through material on the Mexican Mission, I came across a unique document describing the famously mysterious Cureloms and Cumoms of the Book of Mormon. (more…)

This just in:

The Religious Studies Program is pleased to announce the ninth annual Eugene England Lecture on Thursday, April 15th from 7:00-8:30 p.m. (Liberal Arts Building, Room 101). Colleen McDannell, Sterling M. McMurrin Chair of Religious Studies at the University of Utah, will deliver remarks entitled “The Story Lives Here: Faith, History, and Instructional Mormon Media.” The lecture will examine the use of visual culture in American religions utilizing the new LDS Church History Department production of “The Story Lives Here.” The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Brian Birch at brian.birch@uvu.edu or Boyd Petersen at boyd.petersen@uvu.edu or visit www.uvu.edu/religiousstudies. (more…)

Part II in the JI’s ongoing series on secularism and religious education.

I am recently, and demonstrably, interested in the ways in which Mormons think about what history is, and how it is manufactured, and why, exactly, we care so much about it. As you are probably aware, Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles recently delivered at Harvard Law School an address titled “The Fundamental Premises of our Faith.” Generally speaking, he delivered, offering a reasonable primer of the basics of contemporary LDS doctrine and church life: from an embodied God and eternal progression to wards and to nobody’s surprise, marriage. But more than merely outlining the Gospel Principles manual, throughout the entire talk – oftentimes glancingly, but occasionally explicitly – Oaks enunciated a particular way of thinking about information, and from whence it is derived, and how it is organized into knowledge, and about how all these things relate to God that, I think, we can use to understand more deeply the position of those ranks of General Authorities of the church who have spoken most notoriously on the writing of church history in the past thirty years or so, on how the writing of Mormon history should be understood. (more…)