Comments on: Is There A Place at the Academic Table for Mormon Studies?

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:03:24 +0000

Sounds like you two know better than me. I stand corrected. I guess that I never thought of Mormon Studies as a subspecialty, but it’s also not my field. Thanks for the correction.

By: smb

smb — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:19:00 +0000

Joel, in my main field, the sub-specialty journals are never the meat for promotions committees. Mormon journals are going to be no different and shouldn’t be. Subspecialty journals are where fascinating conversations take place and are worth supporting, reading, and publishing in, but tenure is about making contributions to a much larger field.

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:51:46 +0000

Here is another way of putting it: It seems to me that both Joel and John are assuming rather too much knowledge on the part of non-Mormon academic audiences, assuming that they are making fine distinctions about differing kinds of scholars or Mormonism or Mormon publications. My sense is that they — especially when the they is a tenure committee — simply don’t see the issue at this level of granularity. They are more likely to say, “Mormonism? People study that?!? I’d have never thought it…” The trick is to turn this to your advantage by making Mormonism into a case study of something else, which then provides you with the holy grail of junior scholars: a new topic in a well-established field.

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:48:16 +0000

Joel: The solution to your tenure woes are to publish pieces in mainline journals. I doubt that ANY speciality journal on Mormonism, regardless of where it is housed would get much tenure credit.

By: Joel

Joel — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:42:07 +0000

smb,

I wasn’t trying to say that there aren’t spaces in Mormonism where belief is irrelevant. All I am saying is that often belief in Divine intervention or an utter rejection of that belief is the monkey in the scholarly closet of Mormonism.

My criticism of Mormon journals has nothing to do with the quality or importance of the scholarship therein. I agree that they provide a wonderful forum for internal discussion and understanding. The problem is that the tenure process would respect a journal out of a secular university much more than any of the current publications. It could provide an important outlet for scholars who want to hold academic appointments.

I just remember talking to one of the faculty at Utah State about filling the Arrington Chair. I asked him about a fairly prominent scholar in Mormon History and was told that he didn’t have a chance for the appointment because he had primarily published with Signature and various Mormon journals.

By: smb

smb — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:59:36 +0000

Joel, I’m writing a talk now for the MSH conference that I hope will speak to some of the tension you note in #5. There’s a huge space in the study of Mormonism that can be explored now without requiring extreme assumptions about the truth-content of what he said.

I think your proposal of a new journal misses the point. Mormon-centric publications, like other denominational publications, are designed for insiders to work out issues of great relevance to them. When it’s time to come into the broader academic discourse, it’s time to leave the “subspecialty” journals and enter the regular journals.

I also agree with Nate that Mormon studies should be much bigger than Religious Studies or History. I am currently thinking through whether to do adjunct faculty work in medical ethics and humanities, integrating work on Mormonism into those broader projects.

By: John Hamer

John Hamer — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:50:47 +0000

Let me clarify that I was answering the question “Is there a place at the Academic Table?” now (present tense), given the emergence of these Mormon Studies chairs. I wasn’t trying to suggest that there never will be a place or that these chairs aren’t a step in the right direction. They are a wonderful step forward and the two scholars chosen to fill them will surely continue to produce great work.

Nor was I complaining that Mormons (including especially active LDS members) dominate the field and always will. Yes, I’m sure Jews dominate Jewish studies. (That said, not all Jewish professors are orthodox and keeping kosher.) My point was that (Graceland aside) active LDS scholars currently hold all of the professorships focussed on Mormon Studies — which sadly are limited to these chairs and the professorships at the various LDS-owned schools.

That’s not just “dominating” or forming a “core,” that’s 100% — at least as far as professorships go. I think that’s a problem in the present tense, not least of which because it realistically discourages non-LDS students (be they Mormon or non-Mormon) from going into religious studies with a focus on Mormonism.

By: Joel

Joel — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:18:06 +0000

Just a couple of thoughts.

1. I agree with David that the relevance of Mormon Studies depends on their ties to broader academic discourses.

2. I think this is actually happening today.

3. I think that Mormon Studies really needs an academic journal published out of a University that isn’t BYU. The other option would be to publish more Mormon Studies articles in major disciplinary journals. The current journals, though often featuring brilliant scholarship, just aren’t up to par when it comes to tenure decisions. This means that academics must do Mormon Studies outside their normal workload.

4. I think that Mormon Studies will probably only thrive in institutions where students demand this curriculum, or where big money donors can provide well-endowed chairs. Departments tend to develop through grass-roots campaigns or through large donations.

5. Finally, many might disagree with me, but I feel like scholars in Mormon Studies have a serious methodological problem. Believing members must accept the reality of a certain amount of Divine intervention in the course of individual lives and throughout Mormon history. The Humanities and Social Sciences, on the other hand, fundamentally aspire to narrate and quantify the affairs of men. Believing Mormon scholars generally spend much of their time trying to explain spiritual phenomenon using socio-economic, historical, philosophical, or anthropological language that really doesn’t contain the tools to explain the spiritual. As a historian who is Mormon when I read Mormon scholarship written by believers, I always smile when I see scholars trying to negotiate around their beliefs so that they can frame their work in the impartiality that academic discourse demands. I think that scholars of Mormonism have to find methodologies that can be accepted by the academy while at the same time reflecting the genuine spiritual positionality of the writers. Although Bushman has called for this in his essays on Believing History, I think that even his magisterial Rough Stone Rolling falls short of meeting this goal.

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:48:03 +0000

I would also point out that the “Mormon Studies” discussion tends to assume implicitly that the place for the scholarlly discussion of Mormonism is in a religious studies department. Obviously, I have a personal axe to grind here, but I think it would be a huge mistake for scholars interested in Mormonism to think that they only place to go is religious studies and that the only interlocutors worth having a dialogue with are in religious studies. Obviously, there are reasons to suppose that religious studies is the most natural place for conversations, but I think it is important to realize that we also ought to be thinking about disciplines like history, literature, anthropology, economics, sociology, and — of course! — law. The discussion of Mormonism simply isn’t big enough to start drawing (even implicitly) disciplinary boundaries.

By: SC Taysom

SC Taysom — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:28:20 +0000

I think David and Nate are right in this case. If the question is whether there is room for scholars of religion and history who study Mormonism as part of a more comprehensive research agenda, then the answer is yes. If the question is about the presence, even in the distant future, of “Mormon Studies” programs at universities, my answer is a resounding no. If you want to work in the academy on Mormon issues, you have to define yourself much more broadly than as a “Mormon Studies Scholar.” Endowed chairs for senior scholars are one thing–they tend to be designed to garner publicity and fund raising power to universities. Jobs at the assistant professor level are something else entirely. Reading the article in the Boston Globe that carried the misleading headline about departments “scrambling” to teach courses on Mormon studies is revealing. It lists two endowed chairs, a 15 student course taught by a gifted, but temporary, instructor (Proctor), and a course or two at other schools. I think an objective look at the situation suggests that we might be getting ahead of ourselves.