Dr. Flake began with a presentation she entitled “Gendering the Study of Mormon History.” It sounded like the presentation involved some observations stemming from research for a future book about gender and the Mormon experience. She stated that her purpose was to interject women into the story of Mormon History without simply focusing on their oppression.

Before moving to her thoughts on gender, she spoke briefly about the question that Moore’s presentation was to have addressed on the pitfalls of popular culture in teaching about Mormons. Dr. Flake began by arguing that the media has become a powerful competitor in framing Mormonism, and she feared that Trey Parker and Matt Stone (of South Park and Book of Mormon Musical fame) have become the chief interpreters of Mormonism for students age 18-25. While some historians might say that such issues should be relegated to those in religious studies, Flake made the case that media portrayals can make serious historical consideration impossible for undergraduates. She then moved to the South Park episode on Mormons as an example of the powerful ways that such parody can frame Mormon history and thought. She used the example of the telling of the Joseph Smith story with a background track of “dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.”  She argued that the episode told the facts in a fairly straightforward and correct way, but that the events were painted as absurd through caricature.  She stated that teachers of Mormon history face the problem of trying to retell the story of these events without the same soundtrack of “dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb” in the students’ heads. In short, the main problem is that students might know the facts about Mormon history, but they cannot understand them in their proper context.

She offered that one solution to this problem is to teach students religious humility and reflexivity by showing them how all religions have ridiculous stories that have only become accepted through age and acculturation.

Flake continued by offering that her own answer to the problem of inaccurate media portrayals of the Mormon story is to invite students to do “good old fashioned history.” She prefers to focus on the history of Mormon women. She informed the audience that rapid digitalization has given teachers many digital resources for this endeavor. Introducing primary sources will give students context by letting them see history from the point of view of women who lived it.

She proceeded to show how some of these resources might be used. She said that old political cartoons could be utilized to highlight how South Park is similarly a cartoon which will permit students to understand its construction as a parody. She showed a cartoon that portrayed Mormons with harems in 1884.

She suggested another resource might be old photographs of Mormon women which can be found at the Utah State Historical Society and in the near future from the Church Historical Department. These photos show serious women in serious families.

She finally pointed out that students could read the voices of women from the first generation of Mormonism in their diaries available in various sites on the internet. She stated that such stories would bring these women to life through their first-person accounts. She also gestured toward the Women’s Exponent as another excellent resource for finding women’s voices. She suggested the Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book at the Joseph Smith Papers Project website as another excellent resource. She actually had a handout with a wide variety of digital Mormon resources.

After addressing the value of primary sources she turned to the question of gendering Mormon history. She stated that the primary sources help recover the role of women in the Mormon story, but that gendering required showing how relationing the roles of women and men in the church changes the historical narrative or story. She began with the example of Emma Smith and her experiences as a transporter of the plates, the first scribe of the Book of Mormon, and a witness of the plates’ veracity. She also utilized the quote about Joseph not knowing about the wall around Jerusalem to show how Emma had acknowledged her educational superiority over her husband.

Emma was given ecclesiastical duties including that of expounding scripture and exhorting the saints. Her role was much different from the role of other Victorian women that became involved in religious organizations. She was not self-called, but she was set apart to a public function. Thus, the order of the priesthood, while attempting to be proscriptive, also created a legitimacy to women’s place in the church that rarely existed in other religious traditions. Emma was eventually called to preside over the Relief Society which was not simply about benevolence. Joseph instructed the women that they should organize in the same manner as the priesthood. Their work should be modeled after the Savior himself. They should be a society of priestesses with keys to the kingdom that ultimately were expressed in temple rites. Flake argued that the formation of the Relief Society with such authorization destabilized the patriarchal structure of the church as Emma wielded her authority against her husband to combat plural marriage.

She continued by pointing to Eliza R. Snow as another great subject for gendering Mormon history. When Brigham Young disbanded the Relief Society in order to quell the growing power of women in the church, the institutional power of the Relief Society was carried informally to Utah. When the organization was reconstituted in the 1880s in Utah it once again created strains. She pointed to passages from the Women’s Exponent which sought to upend Victorian companionate marriage. Mormon women wanted the vote and to participate in society. They did not want to docilely sit at home catering to their husbands’ every need.

Flake then turned to the question of whether such ideals were ever enacted. She argued that the questions needs further research, but that titles given to Eliza R. Snow such as presidentess and prophetess were signs of women investing themselves with the power of the equivalent male callings. Sister Snow was to the women what President Young was to the men.

Flake outlined a final example of gendered power in the Mormon retrenchment movement. Brigham Young empowered the women to help keep Mormons from becoming dependent on popular consumption from the East. They created their own enterprises and stores.

Flake argues that such women’s sovereignty continued through the first third of the twentieth century. She then reiterated her argument that historians need to study Mormon gender relations, which this means not downplaying women’s oppression in the church, but also focusing on moments of empowerment. She felt that such revisions could also be effective in helping combat popular misconceptions about Mormon history.

Peter J. Thuesen from the University of Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis then gave a presentation entitled, “’A Bible! A Bible! We Have Got a Bible’: The Challenges of Teaching the Book of Mormon.” He began by admitting that the Book of Mormon is difficult to teach to undergraduates because it is daunting and complex. He also added that the same was true in Victorian America where Twain famous compared the book to chloroform.

Thuesen had recent taught a class completely centered on the Mormon experience. His initial offering attracted twenty students—two of which were LDS. He said that Romney and the impending Indianapolis temple had pushed the numbers up substantially for the winter semester.

Thuesen continued by outlining what he sees to be the four principle challenges of teaching the Book of Mormon: the Chloroform Challenge, the Evangelical Challenge, the Historical Challenge, and the Technological Challenge.

To combat the chloroform challenge, Thuesen suggested utilizing recent academic books that help break down the book’s plot and content. He suggested Terryl Givens’s Very Short Intro to the Book of Mormon and similar works of Grant Harding and Jana Riess. Such accounts can help students grasp the truly epic level of the book’s narrative.

Thuesen argued that the Evangelical challenge is quite a bit more difficult. He stated that he had read the account in 2 Nephi 29 attacking Sola Scriptura in favor of continuing revelation and had been corrected with Revelations 22:18. He said that many Evangelicals cannot get past the idea that Joseph Smith will be permanently condemned by God for his changes to the canon of scripture.

Thuesen then proceeded to outline the Historical Challenge. By this, he was referring to the tendency to try and judge sacred texts as history. He argued that students mistake the Book of Mormon’s history-like qualities with an actual history. Thuesen preferred to invite his students to read scripture story as story. This can be difficult because the Church makes historical claims about the book. When students come to think that Book of Mormon does not mesh with any part of “real history,” then they dismiss the whole undertaking. Thuesen points out that this tendency is not a uniquely Mormon trait and that the overall problem is that belief frames the way that everyone reads anything purported to be scripture.

Thuesen’s final challenge involved technology. He pointed out that Mormons have embraced both tactile and technological medias. This makes it easier to abstract specific Mormon scripture and take it out of context. It also means that Mormon messages get out to more people, but that more people also react to these messages in disparate ways. He stated that more arguments exist about Mormonism today than at any point in the religion’s history.

Patrick Mason concluded the panel presentations with a paper called, “What the ‘Bloggernacle’ Means for Mormon Studies.” He argued that in today’s world social media has become ubiquitous, and that this has resulted in Mormon themed and authored blogs collectively known as the Bloggernacle. Mason’s information came from a poll he took of current graduate students solicited on 4 major Mormon blogs. He received 113 responses. Respondents were three times more likely to be male than female. Most were in their late twenties to mid-thirties. His respondents read 86 different Mormon blogs, but only five had more than 20 mentions. The five were (from largest to smallest) By Common Consent, Times and Seasons, Feminist Mormon Housewife, Juvenile Instructor, and Faith Promoting Rumor. To give the scope of some blogs’ popularity he shared that BCC had received over 2 million visits in 2011.

Mason then proceeded to share what many respondents felt the Bloggernacle offers. Overall, most felt that it offered a space that fulfilled unmet needs for intersection between the intellectual and spiritual. Others felt it offered a sense of community, a space for critique, and a manifestation of the heterogeneity of Mormonism. A few graduates students felt that the Bloggernacle actually Balkanized Mormons by created very small and distinct spaces for specific kinds of thought and discussion.

Mason then offered some thoughts on what the Bloggernacle and its adherents mean. He pointed out that 83 percent of the graduate students reading these blogs have no training in Mormon History or Religious Studies and 75 percent had not ever engaged in original historical research on Mormons. He thus posited that the Bloggernacle works, in part, as a distraction and a way to maintain Mormon identity in the sometimes fraught world of academe. He argued that the Bloggernacle teaches students how to explain religious concepts in a secular way which in turn offers non-Mormons an easier access point into contemporary Mormon thought. He also feels that the Bloggernacle might represent Mormonism’s entry into modernity—the idea that religion cannot be the same totalizing force that it once was.

Mason then expounded some of the effects of Bloggernacle as observed by himself and his graduate respondents. He argued that the blogs sometimes enforced patriarchy by becoming “boys clubs.” He also posited that they might result in the dilutions of Mormon Studies into a forum for “glorified naval-gazing.” He thought that the Bloggernacle sometimes creates too many “arm chair” Mormon experts and can wield too much influence and authority amongst its adherents. Yet he also pointed out that no Mormon Studies book will come close to approaching 2 million reads. He also liked the democratizing attributes of the blogging community. He ended with a call that Mormon Studies should seek to harness the Bloggernacle’s positive attributes for classroom discussion.

Dr. Shipps then rose to field questions for the panel. She began by suggesting Kathleen Flake’s “Translating Time” article in the Journal of Religion as critical tool for professors trying to understand Mormon scripture. She also pointed out that she had taught a class called religions in the making which examined the origin stories of many different religious traditions. She thought that religious parody diminished when placed alongside similar traditions. She also stated that when she was elected as president of the Mormon Historical Association she was appointed the presidentess and that she finally understood what that really meant. Finally, she pointed out that the problem with pointing students to the Bloggernacle is that they will also find anti-Mormon sites.

Dr. Sally Gordon commented that the real difficulty in her classes on religions is ignorance about all religious traditions.  Dr. Thuesen commented that endemic ignorance on religion is the fundamental challenge of Religious Studies discipline.

Dr. Flake took the conversation in a different direction by questioning if Mormonism’s newness creates a particular problem. She stated that antiquity conveys legitimacy. She stated that she the history of religion in America as one of constant innovation of which Mormonism is one strain.

Dr. Reid Neilsen asked what to do about Mormon students in class.

Dr. Thuesen answered that Mormons often have no real knowledge about the particularities of Mormon history.

Dr. Shipps stated that Mormons know how to tell what it means to be Mormon, but shouldn’t be relied on to recount Mormon history.

Another questioner suggested the Skousen edition of the book of Mormon for teaching about the Book of Mormon He also argued that having students read it out loud helps. Dr. Flake stated that facsimiles the 1830’s edition also can be helpful in that respect.

Another questioner asked if there is a place for the humor of South Park in class. Dr. Flake stated that she used humor a lot, but that the key is to always ask the students why they are giggling about religious subjects.

A final questioner asked again about how to deal with Mormons when they become hostile to the history that might be different from the story taught in Sunday school. Dr. Thuesen suggested teaching Dr. Shipp’s Journal of American History article to show that there are many strains of Mormon thought. Dr. Shipps suggested her “Prophet Puzzle” article to show that there are two ways to see everything. Finally, Dr. Mason suggested that teacher employ a heavy dose of primary sources. The underlying idea was to use Mormon’s trust of authority to see things in different ways by introducing them to the original authorities. Another audience member suggested that it might be good to give students articles written by members of the church that try to reconcile problems–though this was rejected by Shipps. A final audience member commented that the key is to get back to exploring what history is. There are no methodologies for evaluating faith or belief. Historians look at sources and they put the story together based on their readings of these sources.

Dr. Reid L. Neilson, managing director of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s history department, has written a fascinating account of the Mormon Japanese Mission at the turn of the 20^th century. Neilson argues that the 19^th century LDS missionary experience in the United States and Europe had calcified Mormon evangelizing strategies to a degree that ultimately determined their failure in the rapidly modernizing Japanese nation. While Neilson’s trajectory often wades a little shallow and missionary-centric, his transnational gaze at Mormon mission policy and practice, while situating his study in a comparative Christian missionary framework, offers important inroads for scholars of Mormon history who have too often found themselves mired in the nineteenth century American origins story of a 21^st century global church.

Neilson begins his book by exploring Mormon mappings of Asian religions even before missionary work began in the Far East. He first recounts the changing Mormon understandings about Asian religions and their moral similarities with revealed Mormon teachings. According to Neilson, Mormon leaders first explained these congruities based on the “light and spirit of Christ”—a scriptural term referring to the spiritual revelation of truth to all peoples searching for spiritual patterns of ethical behavior. Neilson argues that this perception changed after leaders visited the 1893 Parliament of Religions and came to understand how Asian religious ethics predated Christianity. Mormon leaders then reframed their understandings of these Eastern religions’ ethical codes by coming to see them as remnants of the universal truths revealed to Adam and Eve and the ancient patriarchs.

Neilson continues his book by describing Mormon interactions with Asian peoples in the years leading up to the establishment of the Japanese mission. Mormons’ encounters with Asian peoples were framed both by historical interactions between the United States and Asia as well as Mormon racial theology.  Neilson argues that Mormon understandings of lineage-based racial identities helped set proselytizing priorities. Consequently, peoples perceived as belonging to the House of Israel, especially those Europeans thought to be part of the tribe of Ephraim, were given first priority. Encounters with Asians in the 19^th century were filtered through this genealogically-defined racial tableau, and Neilson argues that church leaders and members struggled to categorize Asians within this system until well into the twentieth century. Thus, while millenarian Mormon thought sent American missionaries briefly to East and South Asia in the 1850s and the famed Japanese Iwakura diplomatic mission passed through Utah in 1872, Asia and its peoples remained largely outside the Mormon Church’s missionary efforts. Even the Chinese and Japanese immigrants that passed through or settled in Utah were largely ignored as potential converts. Although some leaders such as George Q. Cannon found themselves enamored by the idea of large-scale Asian missionary work and Asian American workers in Utah served as constant reminders of their countries’ unharvested status, it was only in the 20^th century that changing Mormon proselyting priorities led to the commitment of missionaries to Japan on a more permanent basis.

Perhaps one of the most important contributions of Neilson’s book involves the efforts he makes to compare LDS and other Christian models of missionary work. He points out that professional Christian missionaries often studied for years in preparation for their Asian missions. They came from varied social backgrounds and often combined their evangelizing efforts with educational and reformist endeavors. To use Neilson’s terms, they introduced Western culture and education with the Christian message (89). In contrast, Mormon missionaries came into the field with little significant language or proselytizing training. Their evangelizing efforts were driven by Christ-centered theological discussions, and they traveled without purse or script. While the general non-Western orientation of professional Christian missionaries led them to adapt their messages for an Asian audience, the traditional Mormon focus on Europeans and other Christians left them with much less adaptive experience.

Neilson ultimately argues that it was the unbending nature of this Euro-American Mormon Missionary Model that doomed the Church’s efforts  in the Early Japanese Mission. Formed originally under Heber J. Grant’s onsite leadership in 1901, missionaries struggled with the Japanese language, culture, and cost of living. Neilson argues that the Japanese Mission was the least successful mission in the church because its leaders and missionaries struggled to adapt Mormon missionary strategies and tactics to their Japanese audience. Missionary practices such as personal contacting, tracting, and conducting street meetings proved less effective among the Japanese people because of language barriers and cultural constrictions. Past chroniclers have latched onto various reasons for the closure of the Japan mission such as the 1923 Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake, declining U.S.-Japan diplomatic relations caused by U.S. immigration policy, and revelatory insight about the forth-coming horrors of World War II. Instead, Neilson strongly makes the case that it was the mission’s poor conversion results relative to those of other Christian missionaries in the country as well as Mormon missionaries in other places that ultimately doomed the country’s Mormon mission.  In his epilogue, Neilson frames this closure as a temporary setback to Mormon missionary efforts in Japan. Pedagogical and methodological innovations to the Church’s general missionary program in the years after World War II enabled subsequent Asian missionary successes.

Neilson’s monograph offers important insights to readers interested in a variety of historical fields. For scholars of religion interested in mission history, Neilson’s book offers insight on the particularities of Mormon missionary work. He ably explains the motivations and methods involved in Mormon evangelistic endeavors and offers a case study of this model’s successes and failures in turn of the century Japan. Nevertheless, its institutional and missionary-centric focus at times muffles the voices of the Japanese people who either chose to accept or reject the missionaries’ teachings. While Neilson focuses extensively on the missionary-centric problems of translation, his discussion of the problems of reception leaves much of the story untold. Although Neilson has commendably scrutinized a variety of Japanese sources, very few of them come from the perspective of the Japanese people themselves. It seems that the social and cultural characteristics of Meiji and Taisho Japan that predisposed the Japanese to ignore or reject the missionaries’ message constitute an under-developed part of the story. While immigration disputes and natural disasters might not have been the determining institutional factors for ending the Japan mission in 1924, dynamic political, diplomatic, social, cultural, and economic factors certainly affected the ways that Japanese people evaluated the Mormon missionary message and affected the success of those missionaries. Grand historical transformations in Japanese society caused by more than a decade of war might have played as important a role in post-war missionary successes as changes in the Mormon missionary model.

Despite this criticism, Neilson’s work offers profound insights for scholars of Mormon history. His book examines the Church in the understudied years of the early twentieth century which, Kathleen Flake has argued, represented its transition from an un-American to American institution. Even more importantly, Neilson follows one of the key figures of this modernizing transformation, Heber J. Grant, in his attempts to spread the Mormon faith throughout the world. The Japan mission, in Neilson’s hands, becomes a key site where the globalizing vision of the church came into conflict with its 19^th century doctrines and practices in a way similar to, as described by Flake, Reed Smoot’s Senate hearing. Neilson’s work historicizes the budding transnational scope of 20^th century Mormon missionary work without resorting to teleology, and consequently provides a model for other Mormon historians to explore the work of Mormon missionaries around the globe. (1)

Although Neilson’s work is ultimately about Mormon missionaries and their institutional leaders, his dedication to placing his story in a comparative framework offers important contextual guidance and wider historical relevancy for readers.  Neilson’s work joins the growing body of Mormon scholarship that seeks to situate Mormon and Utah history within larger historical frameworks. (2) Neilson rightfully demonstrates that Mormon missionary work in Asia and beyond constructed itself both in opposition to and within the long traditions of Christian evangelism and the Orientalism, imperialism, altruism, and racism involved therein. The story of the global expansion of Mormon missionary work and membership in the 20^th century remains largely untold—especially by trained historians. One can only hope that Neilson’s work prefaces more emerging scholarship on the global expansion of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and how such growth compares with the work of other churches around the world.

(1)Flake, Kathleen, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)

(2) The list of such works is growing so rapidly that I choose not to try and compile a list, but I will point out that many of the bloggers at JI and their colleagues are committed to this model of scholarship.

As the discussion continued, it became evident that our email debate on whether the blog should post support for a facebook group was touching similar questions floating around the academy regarding the political responsibilities of historians. As political pundits such as Glenn Beck and Keith Obermann bend and stretch the realms of historical credulity both to entertain and to push forward their own political agendas, what is our responsibility as historians and historically informed persons to push back and correct these half-truths and de-contextualizations? Why do we study the past? Should historians utilize their craft to advance personal politics and benefit the communities in which they live? What good is historical inquiry if it cannot inform action in the present? Do we do our students a disservice by bringing politics into the classroom?

Almost any historian will agree that knowledge about the past powerfully influences the present and the future. Take the example of Islam and the way it is perceived. If historians ignore the centuries of peace and prosperity fostered by Islamic peoples and regimes throughout the Middle East and India during the Middle Ages when inequality, hunger, and fear reigned throughout much of Europe, then it is much easier to paint Islam as a pathogenic faith. In many ways the European Renaissance emerged as contact with Islamic powers reconnected the Christian world with classical traditions that Muslim philosophers, doctors, and scientists had guarded and advanced. I would argue that current strains of radical Islam actually gained power as means to resist the violence and dehumanization of Western imperialism. It seems sad that such a noble history should be whitewashed through current demonized portrayals of devoted Muslims. It should not matter whether Barack Obama is a Muslim or not—the Constitution guarantees that there will be no religious test for holding office, but the cultural label of “Muslim” through the trauma of September 11 and subsequent wars has become a code for an enemy of the United States. As a label, it has been divorced from any real religious connotation in the minds of many. This has happened before to the Japanese, the Vietnamese, the Germans, the Chinese, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and African Americans.

Whether we visualize the past as a foreign place, a source of comfort, an uncontrollable fascination, or a tutorial for the present, we must decide what to do with the knowledge we hold about the past. The stakes are high since the stories we tell about ourselves often define us as a people. Here at the Juvenile Instructor blog we encourage all to learn about the past and act politically as your conscience might lead you.

Notice that this post uses the example of the Mosque in Manhattan merely as an entrance point for examining the relationship between historical inquiry and activism. My thoughts on the history of the Islam are only given as an example of the power that narrative holds for helping us understand the world in which we live. We have already held a rather lengthy debate about the nature of the Islamic religion and the historical precedents for possible Mormon support of a mosque and community center near the former site of the September 11, 2001 attack. I, and the rest of the bloggers here at JI, reserve the right to moderate and/or delete any comments that do not deal specifically with the connection between history and political activism.

A New York Herald special from Salt Lake City says the arming and the drilling of the Mormons continues throughout Utah and there is much alarm among the Gentiles. Gov. Emery has written to the Secretary of War at Washington asking for more troops to be stationed at Camps Douglass, Cameron, St. George, Logan and Fort Hall. (1)

Sometimes I bemoan my own ignorance about certain aspects of Mormon historiography. Does anyone have any ideas over what the Latter-day Saints were mustering at this time ? And why would such a apparently small event become a national news story? I do know this is about a half a year before Brigham Young’s death.  Marion is about 130 miles south and west of Kirtland, so I don’t think its proximity to the former Mormon settlement would have created such interest. I do know that there was at least one prominent Mormon citizen in town because I saw his obituary.  I will try to include any more gems from the Marion Mirror that I find in the next few months.

(1) George Cristian Sr. and James Newcomer Sr., eds., no headline, Marion Mirror, May 24, 1877, page 2.

Dear Students,

If you haven’t heard by now, the strike committee for the GEO has called a strike that will start tomorrow at 8:00 AM. This means that there will be no discussion section meetings in the time that the strike continues. It also means that I will be unavailable for any consultation, help, or communication in regards to the course. I am sorry that it has come to this. I wish that you all did not have to suffer because of the strike. Please remember that we are only striking because of the actions of the University–withholding our labor is the only recourse we have to fight University practices that continue to infringe upon the quality of instruction and  learning here at the U of I. The strike is the administration’s fault. This is not a decision that was taken lightly. The contract for Teaching Assistants ran out in mid-August of this year. The representatives of our Union have been trying to negotiate with the administration about the contract since May, but did not even receive an offer from their side until right before our current contract ran out. Their contract offer for the next three years was actually much worse than our previous contract which was about to end. It offered no raises for the next three years to keep up with inflation and actually included language that would allow the University to issue furloughs, which means that in theory they would not pay us for any work during the Winter and Spring breaks when we are grading finals and entering grades for our students. This means we would possibly be doing the same amount of work for less pay. Also, the administration refused language in the contract that would protect out-of-state tuition wavers which most of us from other places rely on to stay in school. This contract was unacceptable and so we have been working without the protection of a contract ever since–pretty much the entire semester. We have compromised a lot with the University since August, and we have come to agreements on wages, furloughs, and even health care–these agreements have only come to pass because we have threatened to strike. But the administration still has refused to grant us any guarantees in regard to our tuition waivers. I know that many of you struggle to pay rapidly rising tuition rates here at the University, so you might be able to understand why we, as graduate students, value these tuition waivers enough to strike about them. Most of us are from out of state, so we would even have to pay the out of state rate if we were to lose this benefit. We really do not understand why the University will not budge on this issue. Giving us waivers does not cost them anything. Tuition waivers are like scholarships–they don’t generally represent real money. The University simply agrees not to charge us tuition because of the research we do and prestige we bring to the institution. The waivers would only become real money if the University decided to change their policies, and they wouldn’t be so stubborn about the issue if this wasn’t a real possibility for the University. Thus, we are striking to protect the benefits we were promised when we came to the University.

As you all can tell, in classes like EALC/Hist 120 the TA’s do the majority of the work. We are not, however, paid very well for it–especially when you consider that all of us have Bachelor’s and some of us have Master’s Degrees. Also, almost all graduate students are self-supporting which means that our parents don’t give us any money for school. Many, like me, are married and some even have children and try to live on their small stipends. The relationship between the university and graduate students should be mutually beneficial. They promise to provide us with jobs to help support our time here as students, while we provide them with the labor to teach a lot of the undergraduate classes. This isn’t something that just anyone could do. Most professors consider themselves too swamped with the research requirements made on them to achieve tenure to teach any more classes than they already do, thus the TA’s fulfill an essential role. If TA’s wages and benefits decrease, the University becomes less competitive in recruiting the best graduate students to come here. If the quality of graduate students goes down, so will the quality of your TA’s. At the same time that the administration has been fighting us over every single penny, the University has used large amounts of money to pay severance packages to its corrupt outgoing president and chancellor. It has also spent millions of dollars in legal fees trying to defend them and their illegal actions. Even after White and Herman resigned, they received cushy appointments at the University where they receive six figure salaries to teach fewer students than the average TA. And now the University wants to take away what TA’s already have to pay for the mistakes of their administrators. Remember that the money they spent was YOUR money–the tuition that you often have to struggle to put together. We think that the administration of the University needs to change its priorities back to the students, graduate and undergraduate, and so the TA’s and administration are at an impasse over tuition waivers. I feel like my only option is to stand on principle and go on strike. I really don’t want to hurt any of you, the undergraduates, who are the reason the university is here. I hope this email explains the situation and answers any questions you might have. If you do have more questions about the strike let me know, and I would be happy to answer them. If you would like to help us pressure the administration to resolve this issue you or your parents can contact the administration at these two numbers: Christopher G. Kennedy, President MMPI Phone: (312) 527-7890 ex: 7890 Or: Robert Easter, Interim Chancellor and Provost  Phone: (217) 244-4545. I hope to see you all soon, but I can’t promise I will.

Best,

Joel

(Post Update) Lest you think these problems only occur in Illinois, the University of California system has been wrought with turmoil as thousands of graduate students, staff members, professors, and undergraduates came together last week to protest tuition hikes, waiver revocations, and furloughs. Why is it than when the economy tanks, education is one of the first cuts? Every dollar spent for education eventually generates more than four dollars in tax revenue. Is there any better investment for state and national governments? Once cuts do happen, why do administrators turn to the corporate model to make things work? Comments have been closed, and I don’t want a rehash of previous debates. I just thought that people would like to know that our TA strike was not an isolated event.

Projects of revisionism and re-revisionism have always depended on the revelation and identification of bias within previous scholarly endeavors. Historians try to demonstrate how ideological and methodological blinders have caused previous historians to misread, misrepresent, or even leave out important historical details in order to create space for their own particular projects and interpretations. The study of how historical interpretations change over time and the reasons why such changes occur is called historiography.

Although understanding and engaging historiographical debates is central to the study of history, for those outside the discipline, accusations of bias often are taken as excuses for disavowal. Such overly-simplistic dismissals of scholarship are grounded in a world-view that identifies bias as a spoiler of truth, especially when framed within a world devoted to the idea of objective, scientific discovery. Like it or not, the study of Mormon history has gone mainstream, but its popular manifestations often lack the nuance of deeper, more respectful scholarship. When historians identify scholarly biases, they usually do so not to discredit former scholars, but instead to augment or correct some of their conclusions. We can never look at every relevant document from a particular time period or event. Even if we examine everything we can find, events never occur within vacuums and we must rely on the scholarship of others to place our narratives into proper historical context.

Rough Stone Rolling provides a great illustration of how history works. Bushman’s magnum opus has been proclaimed as the most comprehensive biography ever written about the prophet. He spent years looking at almost every shred of paper that had something to do with the prophet’s life. Nevertheless, if you look at his notes you will find that he relied on Michael Quinn at times when talking about the culture of magic in which Smith grew up. He followed Todd Compton in discussing Joseph’s plural wives. He even follows Fawn Brodie in some of his interpretations, while at the same time superseding many of her other conclusions. Historical scholarship is an inherently collaborative project, and good historians know that even as we criticize and revise other historians’ conclusions that we also stand on their shoulders. [1]

I am trying to make two points. First, I want non-specialists to begin to understand the importance of nuance, criticism, and collaboration within the study of history. I also want to caution historians to think hard about the way that we dismiss other historians’ work and interpretations in historical forums. We need to choose words and arguments that help others understand the discipline’s complexity.

I think that one way to do this is to talk about investment instead of bias as we evaluate other historians’ work. As professionals, historians literally found their careers on particular interpretations of particular events. By spending years developing a dissertation, we have invested time, money, and sweat in creating our own little niche in the scholarly world. We expand this niche every time we publish something new. What we sometimes don’t realize is that when it comes to Mormon history, people are invested for a variety of reasons. Members are invested in a particular narrative of Mormon history that gives their membership meaning, stability, and value. Many have invested their entire lives in a church based on their belief that a fourteen year old boy saw God and Jesus Christ. While this definitely biases the way that they perceive and understand the past, it does not give others the right to completely discredit this narrative either. Just because members are heavily invested in a particular take on history does not mean that that this history is completely wrong. The same goes for all those that have undertaken the study of Mormon history. New Mormon Historians became invested in Mormon history as a scholarly endeavor. Many of them built their academic reputations around the analytical discussion of Mormonism as a social and historical force. Others are invested in disproving the story of Joseph Smith. I really like the concept of investment because it fully humanizes even those with whom we disagree. When we dismiss someone as biased, especially in a public setting, others often perceive it as an attack or complete repudiation. They often respond in kind. I think it is important for us as historians to understand the humanity invested within the stories we tell. We must repudiate scholarly violence. [2]

[1] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling: A Cultural Biography of Mormonism’s Founder (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 573, 575, 624-625.

[2] Some of my thinking is inspired by Jane Tompkins, “Fighting Words: Unlearning to Write the Critical Essay,” Georgia Review 42, no. 3 (1988): 585-90.

One of the things I was trying to argue with my previous discussion of the origins of ethnicity is that historical actors have always espoused various identities, but such self-identifications, at least in 19th century, were never self-consciously ethnic. Brigham Young never got up in the morning and thought to himself, “I’m so glad that I am a part of the Mormon ethnic group.” He had no conception of what ethnicity was; it was not available to Young as a method for interpreting his life and the connection he felt with the rest of the saints. The idea of ethnicity is something that has been imposed as an analytical tool on the past by historians of the present. By inventing the idea of Mormon ethnicity as an explanatory tool for the past, historians think they have conveniently created a paradigm to explain the Mormon present as well, while in actuality they look to present “separateness” as an explanation for past separateness.

Limerick acknowledges the fact that ethnicity is a construct, but she argues that ethnicity existed because Mormons created and maintained a group identity without some unifying idea like ethnicity. Can you see the circular logic? Ethnicity was made manifest because Mormons held together without knowing about ethnicity. I am perfectly willing to concede that Mormons formed some sort of group identity in the past and that they hold some sort of group identity in the present, but these two identities have been profoundly different. Armand Mauss has tried to explain the differences between these two identities by narrating the death of Mormon ethnicity through the globalization of the church. I would argue that the true problem is that the paradigm of ethnicity is at the same time too broad and too problematic to describe the Mormon experience at any point in its history. [5]

I hope everyone will wait with bated breath for the conclusion of my discussion on Mormon ethnicity.

[1] Dean L. May, “Mormons,” in Mormons and Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion, ed. Eric Alden Eliason (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2001), 47.

[2] Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 187 n. 24.

[3] Patricia Limerick, “Peace Initiative: Using the Mormons to Rethink Culture and Ethnicity in American History,” in Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001), 240.

[4] Ibid., 246-255.

[5] Ibid., 252; Armand L. Mauss, “Mormons as Ethnics: Variable Historical and International Implications of an Appealing Concept,” in The Mormon Presence in Canada, eds. Brigham Y. Card et. al. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1990), 332-337.

I have a confession to make to our readers at the Juvenile Instructor. Back in the Spring when the Republican primary contest was still in full gear I seriously considered supporting Mitt Romney for president. It was not because I agree with his policies. In reality I found some of his conservative posturing almost nauseating-though I basically ignore campaign platitudes as drastic oversimplifications made only to secure rhetorical and electoral victories. I did, however, feel drawn to Mitt Romney because I felt at some fundamental level that we share the same values system, morality, and faith. At some level our shared sense of Mormon identity allowed me to look past what I perceived as strictly rhetorical and political disagreements. While the primaries eventually solved this cultural-political conflict for me, I think that my inclination to give Romney the benefit of the doubt in the election illuminates why, as Armand Mauss has stated, Mormon ethnicity makes such an appealing categorization. 1) If ethnicity is simply about shared cultural characteristics or self-identity, I am fully convinced that Mormons represent a distinct ethnic group, at least within the “jello belt”-the long corridor of Mormon settlements that runs from Canada down to Mexico. Building from this logic, I have very little doubt that the ties of ethnic identity could have bound 19th century Mormons even more closely in their early Intermountain isolation.

Nevertheless, my rhetoric supporting the existence of Mormon ethnicity also demonstrates many of the fatal flaws within the academic arguments supporting the existence of Mormon ethnicity. Although this essay might sound like a hatchet-job by the time I am done, I would like to posit my admiration for the scholars that I am about to critique. The arguments presented are in no way meant to demean their scholarship which is far more nuanced than I can possibly present in this overly-long academic reverie-I really just disagree with their characterization of Mormon ethnicity. In my mind, the usage of ethnicity to describe Mormons is problematic for three reasons. First, the idea of ethnicity emerged from unpalatable historical circumstances and has been utilized to obscure social inequalities. Second, if the political origin of this academic category does not create enough problems, assumptions of the existence of ethnicity are fundamentally ahistorical and represent a homogenization of different conceptions of identity. Finally, the concept of ethnicity has become a way of oversimplifying and downplaying the important role of theological and socio-spiritual connections in the creation of Mormon identity. In the long run, utilizing ethnicity as a stand-in for religious identity both expands the bounds of meaning for an already charged-idea beyond the boundaries of efficacy, but also downplays and misunderstands the power of theology, faith, and conversion.

As far as I can tell, the first major push for defining 19th Century Mormonism as an ethnicity came from the Catholic Sociologist Thomas O’Dea in his landmark work, The Mormons in 1957. O’Dea was one of the first non-Mormon academics that seriously tried to understand what was at that time still a Utah-centric church. Although he thought it might be most appropriate to define them as a “curious American subculture,” he also argued that that Mormons, “came closer to evolving an ethnic identity on this continent than any other group.” 2)

In making this argument, O’Dea utilized an analytical conception, ethnicity, that appears natural to the modern reader, but that was a fairly recent conceptualization in the American mind. The term “ethnic group” was first utilized by Jewish scholars such as Louis Brandeis and Horace Kallen in the Menorah Journal in the years between World War I and World War II. Scholar Victoria Hattam has argued that these Jewish intellectuals were trying to carve out a space for Zionist politics outside the common rhetoric of the day which revolved around race 3) Even though the idea was created in the 1920s and 1930s, historians such as David Roediger, Jim Barrett, and Matthew Frye Jacobsen have argued that the idea of ethnicity emerged as a popular way of understanding difference in the years following World War II. This shift occurred for several reasons. 4) First, ethnicity affirmed the most recent invocation of the color line between persons of European ancestry and everyone else. The conception of ethnicity obscured the powerful hierarchal relationships conceptualized around race. Before this ossification of the color line occurred, beginning at the turn of the century, immigrants were generally categorized into a variety of races such as Anglo-Saxons, Slavs, Italians, Nordics, etc. This followed the ideas of Lamarckian evolution which theorized how individual genetic and biological adaptations to environment could quickly become part of a particular groups’ genetic code. Thus, for turn of the century thinkers nationality held some of the same genetic connotations as race. Most immigrants were evaluated on a scale between white and black and were accorded privileges in American society based on how close their particular race fell to the ideal, the Caucasian or Anglo-Saxon race. Over time, these immigrants learned that it was in their best interest to distinguish themselves as much as possible from African Americans and Asian Americans even if they occupied the same jobs at times.

Second, ethnicity portrayed the shift in academic thought about race. Since the turn of the century, Anthropologists such as Franz Boaz and Ruth Benedict had been arguing that race was a cultural phenomenon instead of a biological fact.  This cultural categorization of race divided humanity into three great categories of origin: black, white, and mongol. These categories held sway in the minds of these scholars mostly because they represented linguistic and geographical origins. 5) Sociologists at the University of Chicago school began to argue that if race simply represented differences in culture, then it could be eradicated through assimilation. Thus, ethnicity was conceptualized as a category of analysis that would allow Social Scientists to gauge the progress of different groups’ move toward Americanization. 6)

Finally, these new theorizations about race and ethnicity were buoyed up by powerful historical circumstances. The 1924 Johnson-Reed immigration Act had barred immigration from all of Asia and had severely limited immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Thus, Americans felt less threatened by the raging horde of New immigrants that had produced profound xenophobia during the Progressive Era. African American movements from South to North and West to take advantage of wartime employment made these Black workers enemy number one in the minds of many white workers and leaders. While at the same time the horrors of the Holocaust made the idea of racial persecution based on group identity unpalatable in the minds of most Americans.

Thus, ethnicity became a way for American society to accept immigrants groups as “white” and put them on a path to full acceptance in American society, while at the same time solidifying the divisions between whites and non-whites. For example, we never talk about the difference places of origins from which African Americans came. All Asians are said to look the same even though they have come from vastly different historical circumstances. At some level, I object to the term ethnicity because of these historical and political reasons.

(Tune in next time for my disagreement with Patty Limerick among others)
1) Armand L. Mauss, “Mormons as Ethnics: Variable Historical and
International Implications of an Appealing Concept,” in The Mormon Presence in Canada, eds. Brigham Y. Card et. al. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1990), 332-337; Nevertheless, I do not want to mischaracterize Mauss’s argument. Mauss argues that Mormonism’s international expansion has pushed the conceptual boundaries of ethnicity. I am arguing, in contrast, against the utility of Mormon ethnicity altogether.

2) Thomas O’Dea, The Mormons (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 116

3) Werner Sollors, “Introduction: The Invention of Ethnicity,” in The Invention of Ethnicity, Werner Sollors, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), xiii; Victoria Hattam, In the Shadow of Race: Jews, Latinos, and Immigrant Politics in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 45-49.

4) ; Matthew Frye Jacobsen, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Barrett, James and David Roediger. “In Between Peoples: Race, Nationality and the ‘New Immigrant’ Working Class.” Journal of American Ethnic History 16 (1997): 3-44.

5) Jacobson, 94-104

6) Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)

For example, Chen makes a powerful comparison between the historical path of Mormons and Asian Americans. Both groups represented the epitome of marginalization at the turn of the twentieth century. Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino immigrants came to represent the “Yellow Peril” that had the potential of overwhelming American communities on the West Coast both militarily and economically. Asian immigrants were considered inassimilable and even pathological which eventually led to laws created to bar their immigration to and restrict their economic participation in the United States. Asian Americans became the first group stigmatized as illegal aliens (a category that did not exist until the 1884 Chinese Exclusion Act) and were excluded from the American dream through measures such as Alien Land Laws (legislation which restricted all Asian immigrants from owning land). Mormons likewise suffered from overblown media portrayals. At the turn of the century, they still fought the perception that Mormons were evil, sex-starved polygamists at worst and foolish, backward bumpkins at best. Although Chen would benefit by incorporating some of Katherine Flake’s and Sally Gordon’s scholarship on this period, she presents a workable summary of the ways in which the media portrayed Mormons in the years before and following the Manifesto. [3]

Chen continues by showing how portrayals of both Mormons and Asian Americans had changed by the years following World War II. Her argument is much more nuanced, but, for the sake of time, I am trying to show the merits of her argument that Asian Americans and Mormons have suffered similar rhetorical treatment by the media over time. In the last fifty years, despite some notable exceptions, both Mormons and Asian Americans have been treated as model minorities by the media. News stories have gushed over their success in assimilating into mainstream American society. In documenting this transition, Chen builds on observations made by Alexander about the incredible transition that occurred in the church over the course of the twentieth century as well as a long historiography of Asian American scholars. [4] While the majority of other scholars have imperatively focused on the actions of Church leaders in affecting this change, Chen employs the comparative context of Asian Americans to argue how changing perceptions of both groups also reflected the discursive needs of society at large. The idea of the model minority allows American society to embrace those who are “safely” different because of their supposed assimilation into American society. These model minorities are portrayed in contrast to other minorities that represent foreignness, laziness, or inferiority. Although model minorities are accepted as conditional members of society, their position as minorities is never forgotten even as their role as “model” citizens feeds the American need for continued examples of the American progress.

I do find Chen’s easy grouping of Asians and Mormons as rhetorically equivalent groups a little troubling. Although many scholars have painted Mormons as an ethnic group-especially in the nineteenth century-I find myself a little skeptical. Chen, to her credit, acknowledges the differences and difficulties of the comparison she is making. She feels that the excavations uncovered by this comparison make the rhetorical slight of hand acceptable. Although I find the comparison even more problematic than she, I am inclined to agree about the fruitfulness of her project.

I found Chen’s argument fascinating in light of recent political events. The Mitt Romney presidential campaign would have presented Chen with ample evidence for the continued relevance of her conception of Mormons as model minorities. It seems that news organizations always focused on his success while at the same time mentioning the fact that he was Mormon. How many times did we hear that Romney was the most qualified candidate for president, but that he would have to find ways to win over Evangelical voters because he was Mormon? In the same moment, analysts acknowledged his place as a “model” politician while at the same time reiterating his minority status. Similar rhetorical maneuvering occurs regularly in portrayals of Asian Americans or Asians in general. Think about how the Chinese with the Olympics have been constantly portrayed as master organizers while at the time being authoritarian violators of human rights. I don’t want to downplay the reality and horror of China’s human rights violations, but it is interesting to see how the media want to have their cake and eat it too.

Finally, I just wanted to commend Chen’s work as one fruitful way for exploring Mormon history in the twentieth century without needing to use restricted sources to tell a relevant, fascinating story. Her work also represents a powerful example of finding imaginative ways to engage Mormon history while connecting it to a larger national story. Asian American scholars have argued that the model minority discourse was created in order to criticize minorities that were not “model” citizens. She argues that the Mormon model minority myth was created to regularize American conceptions of family and hard work. Chen posits that looking at national portrayals of Mormons and Asian Americans offers a way to better understand discourses of difference in American history. Has anyone else read her work? What do you think? What do you think about her comparison between Asian Americans and Mormons? Are there other reasons that you can think of why Mormons might have been portrayed as model minorities?

[1] Chiung Hwang Chen, Mormon and Asian American Model Minority Discourses in News and Popular Magazines (Lewistin, NY: The Edwin Mellon Press, 2004); Chiung Hwang Chen and Ethan Yorgason, “‘Those Amazing Mormons’: The Media’s Construction of Latter-day Saints as a Model Minority,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 32, no. 2 (1999): 107-128.

[2] Terryl Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

[3] Sally Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hills: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (Chapel Hills: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

[4] Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Thomas K. Nakayama, “‘Model Minority’ and the Media: Discourse on Asian America, Journal of Communication Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1988): 65-73; Keith Osajima, “Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s, in Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies, ed. Gary Y. Okihiro et. al. (Pullman: Washington University Press, 1988), 165-174 .

For those who haven’t heard of this town either, it was founded by the founder and former owner of Domino’s Pizza in 2005. The small town was created as a model Catholic community. At the center of the community lies the first Catholic University built in the United States in years and at the center of the University lays a Catholic oratory. The founders originally hoped that they could ban the sale of birth control and pornography and the practice of abortions. This stance has since been relaxed as the ACLU threatened to sue over such restrictive practices, but I was fascinated by the drive to create a such a religious community in the 21st Century.

As I was listening to the discussion about Ave Maria and the concerns raised by my fellow classmates, I began to think about how much Ave Maria sounded like Rexburg where I went to school. It has a highly homogenized Mormon population built around a growing religious university and temple. City ordinances discourage the sale of alcohol as well as other vices, while the university pressures its student body to adhere to a rigid code of behavior. I am not looking to criticize BYU-Idaho or Ave Maria. I was just fascinated by the parallels between the two endeavors.

Our discussion ultimately turned to the question of motivation. It was hard for my colleagues to understand why people would want to live in such a way. The question rapidly became: what brings people to create this type of idealized community? We began to consider the validity of utilizing religion as a category of analysis such as gender, race, and class. My question for this post is how can religion be a category of analysis? How would such an analysis work? And as a completely unrelated aside: why haven’t historians produced a good twentieth century urban history of Salt Lake City? I think such a book would be one of the most fascinating reads and research possibilities I can envision.