Mormonism, like Methodism and Catholicism, was a transnational movement from the beginning. Mormons were no more or less “American,” and no more or less “western.”  Indeed, the church was international almost from its beginnings, and at times members abroad outnumbered the members in the U.S.

Yes, yes, yes. I don’t think this can be emphasized enough and regrettably early Mormonism’s transnational history has been woefully understudied (though a handful of insightful studies on the subject exist). My own sense is that closer attention to British converts, their interaction with missionaries from America, subsequent conversions, and migrations to North America will yield a more diverse portrait of early Mormonism, one we don’t fully understand quite yet.

Nonetheless, one might still persist, something important happened in the American West.  Brigham Young and subsequent LDS leaders shaped a Great Basin Zion that was, for several decades, a theocratic kingdom unto itself.  Their patterns of living, economic systems, and family arrangements were unique and distinctively adapted to the material environment of the West.  They achieved a remarkable level of interdependence and collective independence in their new home.

While this narrative of origins is true, it also reflects the romanticized and hopeful account of LDS believers, and avoids the splintering of the Mormon movement that gave rise to alternate, much less “western” tales of development.  One-third of the Mormons living in the vicinity of Nauvoo at the time of Joseph Smith, Jr.’s murder in 1844 did not venture to the far west.  They set up shop in Iowa, in Michigan, in Ohio, and eventually even Texas.  Some went home to Pennsylvania or New York, and reorganized there.  Many Mormons considered themselves diasporic, waiting for the day when a return to the Zion of Missouri was possible.  It’s not that the Utah story is not true; it just isn’t the whole story, and it is a tale told by the larger, ultimately more successful branch of the family tree.

Others have stated the same before, and the John Whitmer Historical Association’s annual conferences and publications—continues to attract a number of insightful studies on “midwestern Mormons” and “prairie Saints,” but it bears repeating again and again. In a survey of the state of American religious historiography published in JAAR a couple of years ago (highlighted here) Paul Harvey and Kevin Schultz conclude with the following reflection on denominational studies:

What is missing from the recent historiography? There is plenty but here we will mention only a few omissions and underdeveloped areas worthy of future invetigation. … We need more books to explain, for example, the lineage of Presbyterianism, or the divisions within Methodism. … Only when these kinds of studies emerge will it be possible to envision a history of what people call “Maineline American Protestantism.” What is that? Is it a movement? A collection of denominations?

I would argue similarly that in order to fully understand Mormonism and what it is—a new world religion? a radical Protestant sect? something else altogether?—we need to pay closer attention to its historical lineage and the divisions within Mormonism (or Latter Day Saintism, if you prefer). And as Maffly-Kipp points out in her blog post, such an approach also forces us to ask important questions about Mormonism’s regional and religious identities:

Rather than taking an up or down vote (western or not?  American or not?), perhaps we can turn the questions around.  What is at stake for various parties (LDS, non-LDS, scholars of religion, scholars of the West, etc.) in using the label “western”?  What does it stand in for?  Why does it persist in the face of countervailing trends or descriptions?

In Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Samuel Brown, professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Utah, friend of the JI, and author of the recently-released In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death (Oxford University Press, 2012), penned a short annotated list of “the five best” books on Mormonism, which included the following:

I introduced Mormonism as part of a lecture a couple of weeks ago on “Religion and Reform in Early America,” tracing Mormonism’s immediate roots to the religious revivals of the early nineteenth century and the rapid changes in society wrought by the transportation, communications, and market revolutions of the era. I thus began with a brief overview of the Joseph Smith, Sr. and Luck Mack Smith family, emphasizing their religious wanderings and their several moves throughout New England and New York in response to the socio-economic upheaval caused by the rapidly-changing society. I then shifted gears to the religious revivals of the 1810s and 1820s, and compared JS’s experience and resultant vision with that of converts to the Methodist and Baptist faiths. We discussed the visitation of an angel and the translation of the Book of Mormon, emphasizing the ways in which the book spoke to those who read it (emphasizing its essentially Arminian theology, as well as its explanation of Native American origins, and paying attention to both those who believed it and those who rejected it), and the formation of the Church of Christ, its embrace of a lay, untrained ministry, and the community’s several moves from NY to Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois and the doctrinal, cultural, and sexual developments that occurred along the way. After summarizing by briefly considering the ways in which Mormonism was both democratic and authoritarian, both Christian and something more, and both cooperative and capitalist, I concluded by comparing Mormonism to other radical religious reform movements and communitarian groups, including familiar groups like the Shakers and the Oneida community,  as well as less-commonly-recognized communities like the Inspirationists (I borrowed directly from Scott Rohrer’s excellent chapter on that group in this book). These comparisons allowed for a consideration of both the immediate conditions to which these groups responded as well as (taking a page from John Brooke) the longer historical trajectory of radical Protestant thought that crossed the Atlantic with early American settlers and colonists and found expression in divergent religious communities into the 19th century.

That same week my class read Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz’s fantastic Kingdom of Matthias, which led to further discussion of Mormons as students considered why Joseph Smith and Mormonism has not only lasted but grown into an emerging worldwide faith while Robert Matthews’s “kingdom” lasted only a few years.

And then today in class we discussed westward migration during the 1840s and 1850s. I used the regions of Texas, California, and Utah as case studies in an effort to highlight the diverse motives for migration. After narrating the death of Joseph Smith, the succession crisis, the Mormon trek west into Mexican territory, the subsequent incorporation of the area into the United States, and the proposed State of Deseret and creation of Utah Territory, we moved onto an in-depth look at Mormonism and Utah in the 1850s, focusing on points of conflict between Mormons and the American government/public: the acknowledgment and expansion of plural marriage, the Utah War, and Mountain Meadows Massacre. Among other things, we discussed the ways in which Mormons were socially and legally constructed as “other”—both religiously and racially (the latter was useful as a segue into the ways in which other groups in the West, including Mexicans and Native Americans, were racialized during this period).

Overall, students seemed very interested in the topic and asked a number of questions. While I mentioned on the first day of class that I have two degrees from BYU, it seems that many students have no clue that I am a Latter-day Saint, and their comments and questions about Mormonism appear to confirm that. They asked questions about Mormon cooperative economics, temple rituals, and especially polygamy, and raised important points about the ways in which Mormons today are simultaneously seen as all-American and somehow still subversive and isolationist. While I don’t imagine we’ll discuss Mormonism again this semester, I am both pleased and a bit surprised at how much time I spent on it in class lectures. How have others’ experiences been? Any critiques of my approach? Suggestions?

While pundits and theologians continue the seemingly endless debate over whether or not Mormonism is Christian/Mormons are Christians/a Mormon can be a Christian, over at Slate, browbeat writer David Haglund weighs in on the Mormon church’s latest advertising campaign (the “I’m a Mormon” campaign) and the recent participation of The Killers frontman and international rockstar Brandon Flowers in that effort:

The video hews closely to the campaign’s usual formula: Flowers talks about himself, then about his values, and then he connects those values to his Mormon faith. Near the end, Flowers talks a bit about his public persona. “A lot of people love to come up to me and tell me they were raised in the church,” Flowers says, “and they expect there to be this camaraderie of, oh, we’ve outgrown it now, we’re smart enough now not to be in it.” One can understand why this would happen: In 2004, Spin identified Flowers as an ex-Mormon, and he has been candid in the past about his drinking and smoking, activities forbidden for devout members of the Mormon church.

But as the existence of this video suggests, Flowers doesn’t see himself as an ex-Mormon, at least not anymore. (If he did, he could have participated in a different video campaign.) What’s interesting about this is the way Flowers frames his re-affirmed faith: “I was raised in it,” he says, “and I still… it’s…” He chuckles. “There’s still a fire burning in there.” That’s the last thing he says before the more standard send-off: “I’m a father, and I’m a husband, and I’m a Mormon.”

For those, like myself, interested in Mormon conversion narratives (as well as unexpectedly Mormon musicians), there’s a lot to unpack here; I’m especially intrigued by the centrality to his faith of his roles as husband and father. (As an aside, the entire corpus of videos available at mormon.org as part of the ad campaign presents a wealth of primary source material for researchers interested in the lives and stories of everyday Mormons today. They strike me as a 21st century equivalent to the personal narratives and life stories of committed Christians that populated the pages of denominational periodicals of yesteryear).

But Flowers’s recent offering at mormon.org is not an isolated example of him speaking out about his faith. In addition to the numerous interviews and articles in which he’s affirmed his Mormonism over the years, his music has long been heavy on religious themes—from the redemptive pleadings and catchy chorus (“I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier”) of “All These Things that I’ve Done” to “When You Were Young,” which Flowers once explained was “about growing up in a religion where Jesus is considered a saviour and also realising people can be saviours, too, whether they be your wife, your best friend or your next-door neighbour. He can come in other human forms.” Perhaps the most striking nod to his Mormonism, though, comes in the music video for the second single released on his debut solo album, Flamingo—“Only the Young.” Filmed in a darkened and otherwise empty theater in Las Vegas, Flowers performs on stage, surrounded by angelic figures descending from a bright light overhead. To anyone familiar with Joseph Smith’s first vision, in which Smith recalled being visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ accompanied by “many angels,” the imagery is obvious. But just in case it was missed, Flowers then mimics the pose often portrayed in illustrations of Smith as the divine light descends upon him (all while singing about the innocence and potential of youth to “break away” and discover the Sun, which will surely “shine again”).

Flowers’s story immediately brought to my mind another Mormon rockstar—coincidentally nicknamed “Killer”—Arthur Kane, the now deceased bassist of the 1970s glam rock and proto-punk band, the New York Dolls, whose post-rockstar career, conversion to Mormonism, and brief reunion with his former bandmates was chronicled in the excellent 2005 documentary, New York Doll. Comparing the two personal narratives provides occasional contrasts—whereas Flowers explains that his renewed commitment to Mormonism means that his faith and family has “surpassed the music now, for me” in importance, Kane’s faith famously found expression in his continual prayers asking for God’s help in reuniting the estranged New York Dolls one final time. Yet in other respects, the two resemble one another, particularly in their visual invocation of Mormonism’s founding prophet. For the Dolls’ 2004 reunion show in London, Kane insisted on wearing “a white ruffly shirt and black leather pants.” While such a wardrobe might bring to mind Jerry Seinfeld before anyone else, in Kane’s mind it was intended to “convey a Joseph Smith kind of image.”

I’m not entirely sure what conclusions can be drawn from these parallel examples, but I doubt Mormonism’s musician par-excellence of the 19th century, W.W. Phelps, had anything like this in mind when he eulogized the deceased Mormon prophet by prophesying in verse that “millions shall know Brother Joseph again!”

2012 Mormon History Association Conference

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

“Mormonism In Its Expanding Global Context: Invitations to New Interpretations and Understanding

The 47th annual conference of the Mormon History Association will be held a month later than usual – June 28-July1, 2012 at the MacEwan Conference and Events Centre at the University of Calgary. The year 2012 marks the 125th anniversary of the establishment of the first Mormon settlement on Lee’s Creek (later Cardston) in southern Alberta by Charles Ora Card. Furthermore, July 1, 2012 will mark the 145th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation. Originally established in 1875 as Fort Calgary by the Northwest Mounted Police, Calgary has become a thriving metropolitan center to many of Canada’s most successful oil, gas and transportation businesses. So come celebrate with us!

Building upon last year’s theme of global transformations, we intend to capitalize on Calgary’s dynamic setting to invite papers that interpret the Restoration Movement in fresh, new ways. Canada is a richly diverse and cosmopolitan nation and as such beckons the immigration of new viewpoints on Mormon history. International studies of the Mormon experience and comparative studies with other faiths and their environments are encouraged; we also invite research that considers changing perspectives. For instance, how have media and the new era of electronic digitalization influenced the print culture of Mormon history and historical research? What influence has internationalization had on church structures and local memberships as well as interpreting our histories? To what extent has U.S. politics defined the internal understanding of Mormonism? How might various disciplinary lenses such as lived religion, theology, praxis, gender, race and ethnicity shape and reshape our understanding of the Mormon past? Beyond the standard North American perspective, how have local cultures, challenging economics, and national politics affected our interpretations?

The intersection of Canadian and Mormon history also begs scholarly inquiry. For example, how did the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1881 impact Mormon migration to Alberta? What unique legal and social challenges did Mormon polygamy encounter in Canada? How does the current debate in the Supreme Court of Canada over plural marriage challenge historical interpretations? How have the Restoration Movements developed in Canada? What of the challenges of secularization?

While we encourage presentations related to the conference theme, we also welcome high-quality proposals related to any and all aspects of Mormon/Restoration history. As a Program Committee we invite proposals for panels as well as individual papers. Innovative formats will also be considered. Please send an abstract of each paper (no more than 300 words) plus a short CV (no longer than two pages) as well as suggestions for session chairs and respondents. Previously published papers will not be considered. Young scholars are especially encouraged to participate. Generous donors have offered to pay travel expenses for some undergraduate and graduate students whose proposals are accepted. Student proposals should include estimated expenses if applying for a travel grant.

The deadline for proposals has been extended to November 1, 2011. Proposals should be sent by email to mhacalgary2012@gmail.com. If necessary, hard copies of proposals can be sent to Richard Bennett, 370D Joseph Smith Building, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be made by December 31, 2011. Additional instructions and information are available on the MHA website at http://www.mhahome.org.

Campbell and Putnam acknowledge this historical religious polarization on the penultimate page ofAmerican Grace. Yet they not only trumpet its rarity but assert that “from its founding, America has had religious toleration encoded in its national DNA.” Our DNA?  Here, the episodic, conditional past is annihilated in a paroxysm of essentialist rhetoric. … We might hope it’s present now. But religiously based homophobia, anti-Muslim tension, and even the quietly continuing evangelizing of Mormons by Wisconsin Synod Lutherans suggest that America’s genetically assured triumph of religious toleration hasn’t yet arrived.

In order to highlight the importance of that history and of the importance of historical context more generally, Butler turns to a narrative familiar to JI’s readers: Mormon history. “Because American Grace makes much of Campbell’s own Mormonism and contains ample discussions of contemporary Mormon belief and behavior,” he explains, “its approach to Mormon history is itself intriguing.” In addition to omitting any mention of “the upheaval of the movement’s radical, polygamous, and harassed past” and instead “jumping to the triumphant present,” Butler highlights the importance of historical context in making sense of the fact that “Mormons are far ahead of any other religious group in believing that even non-Christians can enter heaven; 98% of Mormons—but only 83% of Catholics, 79% of mainline Protestants, 62% of black Protestants, and 54% of evangelical Protestants—hold such views.”

[T]he Mormon heavens and means of getting to them are remarkably different than those of other Christian groups. Only Mormons have held, since the 1840s, that heaven is complex, with “three degrees or kingdoms of glory,” and that Mormons may baptize the dead by proxy to provide the foundation for their entrance into heaven. These views and this history shape modern Mormon behavior. Mormons have collected birth and death records worldwide for a century, now in microfilm and digital form, and are the originators of the fabulous Ancestry.com, which provides access to more than five billion birth records—a gold mine for historians (it’s by far the best route to fully digitized U.S. census returns up to 1930), genealogists of all kinds, and Mormons verifying records for proxy baptism.

This history and this theology upend one of the seemingly innocuous questions Campbell and Putnam pose in American Grace—can even non-Christians enter heaven?—because the respondents simply don’t share the same understanding of “heaven.”  Mormons pointedly understand heaven differently than do other Christians, and they have a mechanism for getting even the dead there, of which others disapprove, most notably Jewish leaders, who have sometimes bitterly protested Mormon proxy baptism, especially of Holocaust survivors. (Campbell and Putnam do refer to Mormon “posthumous baptism” in an endnote, but one limited to Mormon convictions that theirs is the only true faith.)

The entire review is well worth the read, and Butler has much to say in praise of the book. But I thought that his comments on Mormonism might generate some good conversation here. What do you think?

Call for papers

“Mormonism and its relationship with other denominations”

The Mormon religious tradition is based on the concept of an apostasy by all Christian denominations and their consequent lack of divine authority, hence the claim to be the “only true and living church.” In contrast, this same tradition emphasizes its members’ broader religious freedom, and even their need, to recognize and seek the whole truth from any source, including other religious traditions. This dichotomy between excluding and including beliefs, practices and institutions has, throughout history, created a rich and complex dialogue between Mormons and non-Mormons. In Brazil, the traditional religious syncretism alongside an increasing religious diversity makes understanding this dichotomy extremely important for the study of Mormonism in our situation.

As examples of topics to be addressed, we suggest the following:

• The doctrinal, organizational or ritual influence of non-Mormon sources on Mormonism and vice versa;
• The relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Christian and non-Christian denominations, their conflicts and collaborations, and their attempts at differentiation and integration, as well as reactions to proselytizing;
• The different perceptions of the major religions in Brazil and Latin America among Mormons, including perceptions of Catholicism, Protestantism, Neo-Petencostalism, Spiritualism, Afro-Brazilian religions, etc.;
• The relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Latter Day Saint movement denominations present in Brazil and Latin America, regardless of whether or not they use the word “Mormon” to describe themselves;
• The depiction of Mormonism by other faiths and the mainstream media and its impact on its members and the local population;
• The relationship between politics and religion, state, religious organizations and religious teaching in public schools; the reactions of Mormons and other denominations when confronting political decisions and new social contexts; and the limits and perspectives of religious freedom;
• The academic, devotional and missionary use of the Internet by Mormons and other denominations; conflict management and cyberbullying in inter- and intra-religious discussion forums;
• The depiction of Mormons in fictional works;
• Visual identity in clothing and in architecture, its role in the societal perception of religious institutions and their members;
• The perception of Mormonism and other denominations as “Brazilian” or “foreign” churches.

We invite those interested to submit proposals for scholarly papers, panel discussions, and other scholarly presentations about any aspect of Mormonism and Mormon culture. While this conference is academic in nature, we encourage submissions from students, non-academics and amateurs who have interesting and well-expressed presentations to make. We encourage those with limited academic experience to make their proposals and submit their papers well in advance so that we may offer assistance in making the presentation of sufficient academic quality.

Submissions may be on any subject, as long as they involve Mormonism, its history, people or institutions in a significant way. Fields of study might include History, Philosophy and Theology, Sociology and Anthropology, and all expressions of culture, including art, music, literature and film. Because academic conferences like this are inaccessible and somewhat unfamiliar to the majority of the audience for this conference, we will accept submissions that have been presented or published elsewhere.

In addition to the academic presentations above, the conference is open to a limited number of non-academic presentations, such as interviews, personal essays, sermons, films, dramatic performances, literary readings, debates, comic routines, art displays, musical performances and other expressions of the Mormon experience for the non-academic portion of the conference.

Submissions

Those who wish to present or organize a session for the conference should submit an abstract of their proposal by October 1, 2011. Abstracts should be approximately 1 page in length (approximately 250 words) and be accompanied by a brief description of the author’s background or a résumé or curriculum vitae. Notification of acceptance by the peer review committee will be sent by November 1, 2011.

Complete versions of accepted papers must then be submitted by January 1, 2012 or the acceptance may be rescinded! Because we provide interpretation of submitted papers, we must receive complete versions, so that interpreters can prepare for the conference. Without this preparation, presentations can take as much as three times longer than planned. Complete papers should be suitable for a reading time of 25-30 minutes (approximately 3,500 words).

Send submissions to the conference organizers at BMSC10 [at] gmail [dot] com

Hotel and travel information

We will provide information on the venue and accommodations available by October 1, 2011.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Brazilian Association of Mormon Studies
E-mail: BMSC10@gmail.com

The latest issue of Religion and American Culture arrived in my mailbox last week, and I was excited to see the first article dealt with a topic sure to interest JI readers: “‘Until This Curse of Polygamy Is Wiped Out’: Black Methodists, White Mormons, and Constructions of Racial Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century,” written by James B. Bennett, associate professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. 

The article examines the antipolygamy writings that appeared in the Southwestern Christian Advocate, the official organ of the Methodist Episcopal Church in late nineteenth century New Orleans. As Bennett explains, “Black critiques of Latter-day Saints are significant because they gave voice to anxieties confronting all African Americans, even as they expressed a particular denominational perspective” (170). In contrast to their fellow black Methodists in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, African Americans in the MEC favored a racially-integrated religious body, believing it to be crucial to the ultimate goal of social and political equality. Critiquing the Mormons’ practice of polygamy served multiple functions in their efforts to achieve this end: it was part of an effort to curb the widespread Mormon settlement in the West, which limited to spaces available for black Americans unhappy in the South to migrate; it served as evidence that deviant sexuality was not instinctively tied to race (and played into fears that white polygamy was as threatening to black females as the adulterous relationships of white plantation owners and their black slaves in the antebellum era); and it provided the black Methodists with a convenient other whose lack of patriotism and religious heterodoxy contrasted with the black Methodists’ own orthodoxy and support for the nation. Additionally, Mormonism’s own policies of racial segregation were an impediment to the goal of an integrated Christian community, threatening to black Episcopal Methodists in the same way that the racial exclusivism of the AME and AMEZ Churches was.

Bennett’s nuanced article is insightful and well worth the read to anyone interested. It touches on the subject of the racialization of Mormons (which Paul Reeve’s in-progress book manuscript will discuss at length), and provides an interesting and needed complement to the several studies of anti-Mormonism largely limited to the writings of white Anglo-Americans. It also highlights the ways in which the author or editor’s own religious, racial, and regional identity affected the reasons for critiquing the Mormons. Bennett perceptively notes, for example, that anti-Catholicism served many of the same purposes as anti-Mormonism did for black Protestants in the nineteenth century, but that articulating anti-Catholic views in New Orleans, where most of the city’s religious and political elite were white Catholics, was dangerous business.

Bennett concludes by rehearsing the sad irony of what transpired following the events of the 1890s, as Latter-day Saints abandoned the practice of plural marriage (officially anyway) and began their long march toward the mainstream of American society. Southwestern Christian Advocate editor A.E.P. Albert celebrated Wilford Woodruff’s 1890 announcement, declaring that “the twin sister of slavery is now gone forever!” (186). But such celebratory declarations would soon turn to increased frustration. Mormonism’s march toward the mainstream in the first half of the 20th century cruelly coincided with the imposition and enforcement of Jim Crow laws throughout the South. The Methodist Episcopal Church, which these black Methodists had once seen as the engine driving the move toward racial equality, pushed them further to the fringes of the denomination. In 1939, the unification of the MEC, MEC, South, and Methodist Protestant Church, resulted in the official segregation of church jurisdictions—a policy that wouldn’t be reversed until “less than a decade before the 1978 Mormon decision to extend full privileges to people of African descent” (186).

Violence and Religion: Nineteenth-Century Massacres in the American West

Thursday, January 5, 2012: 3:00 PM-5:00 PM

Westin Chicago River North, Promenade Ballroom B

Chair: Patricia Nelson Limerick, University of Colorado Boulder and vice president, AHA Teaching Division

Papers:

Jan Shipps, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and Sarah Barringer Gordon, University of Pennsylvania—The Sins of the Fathers: The Mountain Meadows Massacre as a Religious Event 

Jennifer Graber, College of Wooster—”The Indians Have No West Point”: The Meanings of Frontier Violence among Missionaries to the Lakota

Comment: Patricia Nelson Limerick, University of Colorado Boulder and vice president, AHA Teaching Division; Edward T. Linenthal, Indiana University

My sense is that this is a more polished and developed version of the paper presented by Shipps and Gordon at MHA in 2010. Even if it is the same paper, pairing it alongside research on frontier violence among other missionaries and Native Americans in the 19th century west may bring to light new ways of thinking about MMM. That Patricia Limerick, one of the most distinguished historians of the American West, is similarly encouraging.

A Place for Grace: Religion and Contests of Identity in the Mississippi River Valley, 1812–45

Friday, January 6, 2012: 2:30 PM-4:30 PM

Westin Chicago River North, Jackson Park Room

Chair: Amanda Porterfield, Florida State University

Papers:

Alice Croxall, University of Delaware—Not Just “A Lamp to Their Feet”: Identity and Christian Print in the Mississippi Valley in the 1810s

Brian Franklin, Texas A&M University—“Electricity to the Churches of the East”: Home Missions and the Mississippi Valley, 1814–45

Seth Perry, University of Chicago—“Go Down into Jordan: No, Mississippi”: Mormon Nauvoo and the Rhetoric of Place

Comment: Amanda Porterfield, Florida State University

Seth Perry is a graduate student at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School whose dissertation examines religious texts and religious authority in the early American republic. I don’t know Seth personally, but he’s become an increasingly active voice in commenting on Mormonism in the public sphere over the last few years, writing and presenting on everything from studying Mormonism as an outsider to the Book of Mormon musical. As in the case of the other session, it’s encouraging to see papers on Mormonism as part of panels that bring that research into comparative perspective.

Teaching Mormonism in the Digital Age

Saturday, January 7, 2012: 2:30 PM-4:30 PM

Westin Chicago River North, Promenade Ballroom A

Co-Sponsor(s): Mormon History Association

Chair: Jan Shipps, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Papers:

Kathleen Flake, Vanderbilt University—Gendering the Study of Mormonism

Patrick Mason, Claremont Graduate University—What the “Bloggernacle” Means for Mormon Studies

Jonathan Moore, Denison University—Big Love, Big Problem? The Pitfalls of Popular Culture in Teaching about Mormons

Peter J. Thuesen, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis—“A Bible! A Bible! We Have Got a Bible”: The Challenges of Teaching the Book of Mormon

Comment: The Audience

This one promises to be a popular session, and features a number of interesting perspectives. I’m especially interested in what Kathleen Flake has to say about gender and (as I imagine all readers of this blog are) Pat Mason’s thoughts on the bloggernacle and its place in Mormon Studies. And the insights of Moore and Thuesen are sure to be equally significant. It’s pretty incredible to realize that a panel on teaching Mormonism features presentations from professors at schools all over the country (and none from institutions in Utah).

There are, of course, a number of other interesting sessions on various other topics, and I encourage anyone interested to take a look at the program and try and make it to the conference. We’ll do our best to have someone in attendance to report on the sessions.

A bit about me: I am a bit of an odd duck in Mormon studies because although I was raised in the Church I have never lived or studied in the Mormon culture region. My undergrad degree is in anthropology from MIT (my senior thesis was a history of the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program, based on interviews and fieldwork conducted in the Navajo Nation), and my graduate degree is a doctorate in the History of American Civilization from Brandeis University. My dissertation explored the world of Protestant fundamentalist religious radio through old recordings, correspondence, sermon notes and ephemera and it took me to archives at the Fuller Theological Seminary, Presbyterian Church-USA, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Billy Graham Center, and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. I published a book based on that research with University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2002, titled Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion and Popular Culture in America. I’ve published LDS-related articles in Dialogue and a chapter on Belle Spafford in the BYU-published 2005 collection New Scholarship on Latter-day Saint Women in the Twentieth Century. This year I presented at Richard Bushman’s birthday symposium in Springville and I’m currently working on a chapter on Mormon lived religion for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook to Mormonism. Unable to confine myself to just one, I run in several overlapping scholarly circles, including radio studies, media studies, cultural history, religious studies, digital humanities and women’s history. I blog about my teaching at http://tonahangen.com/blog and about the YW program and youth in the church at http://beginningsnew.blogspot.com. You can also find me on Twitter, @tonahangen.

I am in the History and Political Science department at a state university in Worcester, Massachusetts, where I teach (with a 4/4 load) the US survey since 1877, the methods course for majors, a pop-culture-based honors freshman seminar each fall and electives in social history, intellectual/civic history, medical history, religious pluralism, and the American west. I am starting my fourth year there, juggling my teaching with committee assignments and various academic advisory boards. I’m on the leadership team of the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Honors Program, as I’ve discovered I have an interest in and knack for curriculum development, pedagogy and syllabus design, and program administration/assessment. I suspect that through serving in callings, many Mormons like me develop an instinct for committee work which translates very well into academic, nonprofit or business institutions (which are often starving for capable, even-tempered team players with a clue about how to run a meeting).

Although career-wise I’m probably closer to “senior statesman” status among the JI group because I am farther along the academic track, I still feel like a novice and a newbie in Mormon history and I look forward to learning from everyone as I dip my toe deeper into those waters. I hope to contribute to JI from my multiple perspectives – as a early-career full time tenure track history professor; an LDS woman who navigated graduate school, dissertation, and first book while married with a young family; a scholar of Mormonism living far away from its archival collections; and a writer always in search of new projects and new questions.

As you can tell, Tona brings a valuable perspective (or perhaps, more accurately, several valuable perspectives) to the Juvenile Instructor community, and we look forward to her contributions. Please join us in welcoming her and be sure to visit and join in the conversation on her forthcoming posts!