Nate R. teaches American History to 8th graders and community college students in Colorado Springs. His MA Thesis on slavery in Utah won the MHA’s Best Thesis prize in 2008. His transcription of Joseph F. Smith’s Hawaiian diaries, titled “‘My Candid Opinion’: The Sandwich Islands Diaries of Joseph F. Smith,” is coming out in June.

In summer 2005 I was working as a researcher/writer for the Education in Zion Exhibit at BYU when the exhibit director, philosopher C. Terry Warner, called me into his office. He had been putting a lot of thought into it, he told me, and had decided to assign me to do the background research for one of the permanent Exhibit features: an overview of the life of Joseph F. Smith (EiZ is housed in the Joseph F. Smith Building). (more…)

To say that the study of Mormon history has entered the digital age would be a drastic understatement. Last friday, representatives from the LDS Church History Library gave what appears to be an exhilarating introduction to new web content for both the Library itself as well as the Joseph Smith Papers. (A Mormon Times article last week also highlighted the JSP’s emphasis shift from print to web, though there will still be much printed goodness.) The awesomeness of these sites and their online content cannot be overstated. I fear that if I tried to outline the positive aspects of this I would merely be stating the obvious. Regardless, I drone on. I’d like to outline what some of the best online digital sources are, what the positive impact may be within the Church and the academy, and finish with a few words of caution. (more…)

Below are this year’s Mormon History Association award winners. Juvenile Instructor bloggers are identified in blue.

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I submitted the following abstract in response to MHA’s call for papers for the 2011 conference, underway as we speak. I was pleased to receive notice that my proposal had been accepted, but in the time between submission and acceptance, circumstances had changed. My family was now expecting a new arrival, due May 23, 2011 (he arrived a week early—welcome, Hyrum!). Since the due date was the very week of MHA, I declined acceptance, and I’m jealously following reports of those who are attending. Here is the abstract: (more…)

In case anyone needed more motivation to attend. (Or, in my case, more regret at not being able to attend.)

What follows are short abstracts of the MHA papers being presented by Juvenile Instructor contributors, just to give you a sampling. There are numerous other Mormon history and bloggernacle celebrities taking part in the conference (including JI’s friends Sam Brown, Brittany Chapman, Rob Jensen, Janiece Johnson, and Margaret Young, to name a few), so keep your eyes peeled to the online program. (more…)

As most of our readers probably know, the Mormon History Association’s annual conference will be held next week in St. George, Utah. The program looks great, and a number of JIers will be presenting and participating. I look forward to hearing great papers, catching up with old friends, and hopefully making new ones. For those students who plan on being there, make sure to attend the student reception on Friday evening after the awards banquet at 9:15 pm; it’s a great place to relax and meet other young scholars studying Mormon history–plus there’s free food and door prizes. (more…)

With the participation of a host of notable scholars (and including a number of JIers), this looks like it’s going to be an amazing event.  (more…)

Behold here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man: Because, that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.

-Revelation to Joseph Smith, May 6, 1833 (Doctrine & Covenants 93:31)

“Agency” is a buzzword prominent in both of the worlds that I, and other Mormon historians, inhabit on a day-to-day basis. Within the world of Mormonism, the word signifies a central tenet of Latter-day Saint theology, one that receives regular and sustained attention from church leaders and in Sunday School curriculum. In the historical profession, meanwhile, “agency” has been labeled “the master trope of the New Social History”—signifying the collective efforts of social historians to rescue from the dustbins of history the lives and stories of marginalized figures, including especially African American and Indian slaves, women from all walks of life, and others who left behind few written records and lived otherwise unremarkable lives.[1]

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D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, Revised and Enlarged Edition. Salt Lake City: Signature, 1998.

In reassessing Quinn’s classic study, I’ll simply say that Stephen Ricks’s and Daniel Peterson’s review of the first edition still applies to the second. The book “reflects deep erudition” and “offers considerable evidence indicating that Joseph Smith, members of his family, and some of his early associates were involved in the use of seer stones, divining rods, amulets, and parchments, as well as in the search for buried treasure.” In other words, Quinn effectively argues his chief assertions. (more…)

For the past three years Patricia Lyn Scott has served the Mormon History Association, first as Co-Executive Director and then as Executive Director, just the most visible period of her decades of dedicated service to the organization as a member of councils, boards, and committees. As Pat concludes her three-year service as Executive Editor, we, her current Board colleagues, express our heartfelt appreciation for Pat’s significant contribution to the advancement and perpetuation of the Association. Her term as Executive Director will end later in the summer on July 31, 2011, consistent with her original appointment, after directing the work for the imminent St. George Conference. Along with her notable work on the earlier Sacramento, Springfield, and Independence conferences, as well as the 2012 Calgary conference, her kindly manner and friendly cheer have helped MHA in equally important ways. We wish Pat well in her current and future scholarly projects, which are several. (more…)

On December 11, 1917, William Smart recorded in his diary, “Wife and I are fasting today. I bathed and thoroughly then anointed myself from head to foot with consecrated oil after praying to the Father and presenting this for purpose of further cleansing and as a token to present myself clean before him.” The many entries in Smart’s diary as well as those of hundreds of others Latter-day Saints illustrate how ritual objects can be a primary form of evidence for understanding religion as lived experience and sheds light on what believers do with material things. (more…)

In a previous post, I mentioned a sort of revelation I had while reading Brooke’s Refiner’s Fire. “Wait, Steve,” the Spirit said, “don’t write this book off. You have to understand a few things. What Brooke is talking about here are ‘temple’ or esoteric truths that are by nature difficult to verbalize. Such ideas have been passed through the ages from original pure sources and had thus become somewhat corrupted. These factors make what Brooke is talking about not so easily recognizable or understood. Furthermore, don’t pretend that you understand what the temple is about. So read the book with an open mind. You’re going to spend the rest of your life trying to figure this stuff out.” Or something like that.

Since working on that issues the last ten years, I’ve wondered what those “pure sources” were: “primitive Christianity,” Moses, Abraham, Enoch? (more…)

Steven Harper passed along the following note and requested we post it at JI:

The Department of Church History &  Doctrine at BYU is hosting a breakfast on Friday 27 May  at 7 AM, before Professor Reeve’s talk at MHA.  Join us at the Hilton Garden Inn, adjacent to the Dixie Center where the MHA meetings will convene.

We wish to cast a broad invitation to all who may be interested in joining the Dept. faculty and would like to ask questions, learn about dissertation grant and adjunct teaching opportunities, etc.  There are no obligations.  We hope that if you’re interested and able that you’ll join us.

David F. Holland. Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 275pp. + index.

We spend a lot of time at this blog considering how Mormonism fits within larger frameworks in American religious history and what it uniquely reveals about the shape and contours of that past. Among the most obvious answers to the latter consideration is Mormonism’s prophetic tradition, with its adherence to a belief in continuing revelation and an expanded (and expanding) canon of scripture. In trying to tackle the complicated question of whether Mormonism can be accurately described as “Protestant” in any meaningful sense on a recent post, among the most significant reasons for those who answered “no” was Mormonism’s claims to revelation and scripture beyond the bounds of the Old and New Testaments.

But just how unique is Mormonism in this regard? What precedents are there in the American past for such beliefs and how do Mormon prophets and scriptures fit within the larger history of the (more…)