The first of its kind in the nation, the Tanner Humanities Center’s Mormon Studies fellowship provides a doctoral student funds to spend a year researching the history, beliefs, and culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members, or any religious group that traces its roots to Joseph Smith Jr. This fellowship is open to all dissertation level students of the Mormon Experience from any university in the United States or from around the world. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to: Theology, History, Sociology, Economics, Literature, Philosophy, and Political Science.
Provo, Utah – The world’s largest database of Latter-day Saint art just got bigger. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog (https://bookofmormonartcatalog.org) now includes not only visual art inspired by the Book of Mormon but also art based on Church history, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.
Since the catalog launched in 2022, it has grown to include more than 8,000 artworks. The website organizes Latter-day Saint art from the 19th century to today and from artists around the globe. Careful research by the Book of Mormon Art Catalog team has brought these pieces together from public and private collections, archives, museums, and the holdings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other branches of the Restoration.
Users of the free website can choose to explore “Book of Mormon Art” or “Restoration History & Scripture Art.” Within each section, the updated website has six helpful browsing categories—1) artist’s name, 2) year of creation, 3) artist’s country, 4) scripture reference, 5) topic, and 6) style or technique.
The Faith and Knowledge Conference was established in 2007 by Latter-day Saint scholar Richard Bushman. Its mission is to bring together graduate students and early career scholars from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Community of Christ, and other faith traditions that follow Joseph Smith. The conference aims to explore the interactions between religious faith and scholarship for members of restoration movements. During the past eight meetings, students have shared their experiences as Mormon scholars in the academy with an eye toward the challenges and insights resulting from the intersection of faith and scholarship. These papers and conversations have provided thought-provoking historical, exegetical, and theoretical perspectives, as well as compelling models for locating discipleship through scholarly disciplines.
On August 9, 1984, three thousand Young Women from 30 Stakes and Districts across eight Midwestern states arrived in Nauvoo, Illinois for a week-long regional encampment. The camp, themed “Rejoice in Womanhood,” centered around the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during its Nauvoo period from 1839 to 1846, with a focus on over a dozen significant women. Unprecedented in its scope, planning, and logistics, the Nauvoo Encampment was a milestone of the Church’s organized regional encampments for youth.
Planning for the Encampment had begun one year prior, during the last months of General Young Women’s President Elaine Cannon’s tenure. By the summer of 1984, under the leadership of newly-called general Young Women’s President Ardeth Kapp and her counselors, Sister Patricia Holland and Sister Maurine Johnson Turley, the Encampment included formal direction by Salt Lake leadership, even while it also enjoyed the planning and volunteerism of regional, stake, and ward Young Women’s presidencies and camp leadership.
Although this is a late call, I am looking for any of my fellow Encampment attendees and/or Young Women’s leaders from any of the following stakes or districts (See below.) Please comment if you have memories, photographs, mementoes, or connections to those involved in attending or planning. Or, you may reach out to me directly at RadkeA@byui.edu I would love to hear from you!
Politics and Religion: The Impact of Governance and Government on the Restoration Movements from 1830 to the Present
September 18-21, 2025
Independence, Missouri
Our conference in 2025 falls on the centennial anniversary of debates about supreme directional control in the RLDS church and the “Scopes Monkey Trial” on the national level. We will also be meeting at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, at the heart of a landscape where tensions between politics and religion have had a lasting impact on the community. Papers might include church leaders’ interactions with US presidents, reactions to Supreme Court rulings, social justice issues, attitudes towards scientific developments, the role of religion in education, political demographics of Restoration religions, institutional statements of party advocacy or neutrality, and more. With politics on everyone’s mind these days, there will be plenty to debate!
The Mormon History Association invites you to Ogden, Utah for its sixtieth annual conference to be held June 5-8, 2025. Situated on the Ogden and Weber Rivers near where they join the Great Salt Lake, and nicknamed “Junction City” when it became the connecting point between numerous railroad lines, Ogden has long been a site of junctions. Long before Latter-day Saints dreamed of an American Zion in the Great Basin, ancestors of Shoshone and other indigenous peoples criss-crossed the region, establishing trade networks and sharing languages, settlements, and cultures.
The keynote speaker for the Juanita Brooks Conference on Utah History will be Dr. Matthew J. Grow! Grow is Managing Director of the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In that capacity, he leads a team of history professionals who collect documents and artifacts, preserve them, and promote understanding of the Church’s past through a publishing program, a research library, a museum, and many historic sites. Grow also serves as a general editor of the Joseph Smith Papers and Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days. He has published widely on Latter-day Saint history and American religious history. Grow received his PhD in American history from the University of Notre Dame.
You can read more about the Brooks Conference below:
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”
Steven Borup on In Memoriam: James B.: “Bro Allen was the lead coordinator in 1980 for the BYU Washington, DC Seminar and added valuable insights into American history as we also toured…”
David G. on In Memoriam: James B.: “Jim was a legend who impacted so many through his scholarship and kind mentoring. He'll be missed.”
Recent Comments
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”
Steven Borup on In Memoriam: James B.: “Bro Allen was the lead coordinator in 1980 for the BYU Washington, DC Seminar and added valuable insights into American history as we also toured…”
David G. on In Memoriam: James B.: “Jim was a legend who impacted so many through his scholarship and kind mentoring. He'll be missed.”