Section

Mormon History Association

Call for Applications: Face-to-Face Mentorship Event at MHA 2021

By April 28, 2021


MHA’s Face-to-Face mentorship event will be online at this year’s conference, through Zoom on Friday, June 11, 5:30 pm-6:30 pm MST. The purpose of this hour-long event is to facilitate conversations between applicants and experienced scholars of Mormon history. We are seeking applications from those interested in participating, whether as mentors or as students, non-traditional students, independent scholars, and so forth. Applicants can propose to talk to people about their research, career trajectories, digital humanities, publishing, public history, and more! This is an amazing opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation and to receive specific advice about your unique place in the field of Mormon history. 

Continue Reading


DH and the Woman’s Exponent

By June 14, 2019


“The techno-revolution has begun! Soon, robots will scour women’s words and discover the truth about everything.” Or, at least, that’s what I imagine Brigham Young would have said if he had read the University of Utah’s Digital Matters Lab and BYU’s Office of Digital Humanities’ preliminary report on topic modeling the Woman’s Exponent. Sounds like something he’d say.

The “Quick and Dirty Topic Model” is a sneak-peek at a larger project that will be released with Better Days 2020, which is the sesquicentennial celebration of women’s suffrage and the centennial of the 19th Amendment. It sounds like the results of the later slow and thorough topic model will be released in a digital and explorable format with the Better Days celebrations.

Continue Reading


Women in Mormon Studies Website: 3 Brief Takeaways

By July 23, 2018


I was thrilled to be able to check out the Women in Mormon Studies (WiMS) website over the weekend. It represents the labor of many women that have worked together to amplify the work of women in our beloved subfield. After looking at scholar profiles (you can add yours HERE), I’ve come to a few conclusions:

  1. Male-Only Panels Need to be a Thing of the Past

Continue Reading


JI Summer Book Club: Jared Farmer’s On Zion’s Mount

By June 21, 2018


Back by popular demand, the Juvenile Instructor will be hosting its Fourth Annual Summer Book Club in 2018! This year’s book is Jared Farmer’s On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Harvard UP, 2008).[1] The selection of Farmer’s book continues our ongoing emphasis on biography. The first two years, we read and discussed Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling and then Newell and Avery’s Mormon Enigma, biographies of Mormonism’s founding couple. Last year, we read Ulrich’s A House Full of Females, a group biography of several women (and a few men) of the movement’s first generation. On Zion’s Mount is perhaps best understood as the biography of a place—Mount Timpanogos—and how it became such a prominent landmark in Utah.

Continue Reading


Attending MHA as an Avocational Historian

By May 25, 2018


A few days ago I posted on what it’s like to attend the Mormon History Association annual conference. Today I’m going to write about why I attend and what it has been like for me in my particular situation. We anticipate a few other posts like this from different perspectives.

There are multiple reasons why someone might attend MHA and I’ll describe a few below but I think the main reason boils down to this: MHA goers are interesting people who know cool stuff. You are an interesting person who knows cool stuff. If we all hang out and talk about the cool stuff we have a good time and learn more cool stuff. If we do this often enough eventually we’ll all be so cool and interesting and together that we’ll need to wear sunglasses.

Continue Reading


What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Attend MHA

By May 23, 2018


Last week commenter acw wrote: “As one who hasn’t ever attended but has considered it,, could you also post some kind of MHA for newbies guide? Like why and how to come/participate, etc.” Below I provide a general description of what to expect and how to attend. In a subsequent post I’ll talk about the whys and hows of my experience at MHA as an avocational historian. We’re hoping to get together a few other what-it’s-like posts from different perspectives.

Continue Reading


MHA Proposal Networking Thread

By September 12, 2016


October 1, 2016

That’s the deadline for proposals for next year’s Mormon History Association annual conference in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s three weeks away. It is, as they say, looming.

Continue Reading


An MHA 2016 Primer; or, Reprising Practice Month at the JI

By June 8, 2016


On the cusp of the annual Mormon History Association conference, which is centered on the theme of “practice” this year and begins later this week at Snowbird, UT, it seems like a good time to highlight some of the resources and the work done here at the JI on the theme of “practice” during March 2014. During that month (which hardly seems like two plus years ago), we carried the theme of practice through a series of posts from guests and regular contributors. See, for instance, guest Megan Sanborn Jones’s analysis of Mormon pageants and religious performance, J. Stapley’s discussion of his favorite books on liturgy/ritual, or Kris Wright’s thoughts on “Vernacular Architecture and Religious Practice.” We also had a (somewhat delayed) multiple part “Scholarly Inquiry” interview with Dan Belnap on his edited volume By Our Rites of Worship: Latter-day Saint Views on Ritual in History, Scripture, and Practice. And we put some effort toward assembling a (theoretically) comprehensive bibliography dealing with matters of practice in Mormon history. If you’re looking to grease the skids for a memorable and productive conference this weekend, you could do worse than to start here!


Proposing Panels for MHA’s Annual Conference: A Few Thoughts

By September 1, 2015


MHAWe are one month away from the deadline for MHA’s call for papers, so I thought this was as good a time as any to talk about the conference in general and conference papers in particular. I hope every reader of JI has had the privilege to attend MHA’s annual conference. It truly is a phenomenal time, with a mixture of solid papers and warm comraderie. It is quite unlike most historical conferences I attend where few people actually attend sessions and most people remain in the halls, at restaurants, and doing anything but hearing papers. There is certainly plenty of socializing and networking at MHA, but the thing that sets it apart is people actually care about the sessions, papers, and presenters. It’s refreshing, honestly. There are at times poorly-attended sessions, but more often than not the rooms are mostly filled, and not too infrequently they are overflowing with more anxious attendees than there are chairs. This is one of the conference’s great strengths.

Continue Reading

Series

Recent Comments

Steve Fleming on Thoughts on Study and: “Thanks, Brent. Sorry I missed this. Get some more posts up soon.”


Brent on Thoughts on Study and: “I commend you for your efforts. Godspeed.”


Liz Busby on Mormon Studies at the: “What are the conference dates? When are proposals due?”


thechair on New Books in Mormon: “What about Benjamin Park’s “American Zion,” published this month (Jan., 2024)?”


Chad Nielsen on New Books in Mormon: “Thanks for putting this together!”


Chad Nielsen on Relaunch of Element: A: “Is the April due date for 2024 or do I need to locate a TARDIS?”

Topics


juvenileinstructor.org