Notes From the 6th Annual A. Dean Larsen Book Collecting Conference at BYU

I was unable to attend this conference, but Trevor Holyoak did attend and has been kind enough to share some notes from the sessions he attended.  He notes at the end a website where past years booklets have been posted.  These booklets are well worth a look as they are loaded with great information and are very well designed.  Hopefully the program directors will publish this year’s booklet soon.  When it is, we’ll link to it on our sidebar.  Thanks Trevor!

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Daguerreotype of Joseph Smith Wearing The Urim and Thummim: Caution, This Will Disturb You

I’ve probably been one of the more positive and hopeful through this undying one-upmanship of Joseph Smith photo-finding that we’ve experienced in the last year.  With this latest edition to the fold of false Josephs, I just may be losing hope, and Ardis may just be proving prophetic yet again.

Check out this crank on Ebay.

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Glenn Beck and the Revival of Mormon Millenarianism?

Glenn Beck, noted right-wing political pundit and Mormon convert, has recently been dubbed “Fox News’s Mad, Apocalyptic, Tearful Rising Star” by Brian Stelter and Bill Carter of the NY Times (ht: Paul Harvey). Casting him as a conservative “revivalist in a troubled land,” the writers note that Beck’s rhetoric is often more akin to a preacher than a reporter.

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Conference on Mormonism in the Public Mind, April 2-3, 2009, UVU Library

Below is the program for what promises to be an exciting conference on public perceptions of Mormonism.

The UVU Religious Studies Program presents the
Eighth Annual Mormon Studies Conference

Mormonism in the
Public Mind
Perceptions of an Emerging World Faith

April 2 – 3, 2009
Lakeview Room, UVU Library (Thursday)
Ragan Theater, UVU Student Center (Friday)

Conference Description

The past few years have seen an unprecedented public discussion of Mormonism. From the 2007 PBS documentary “The Mormons” to Mitt Romney’s run for the White House, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Mormon groups have been the subject of nearly unceasing scrutiny. 2008 was a year in which we witnessed the raid of an FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas and the tumultuous debate over Proposition 8 in California.

Throughout their history, Latter-day Saints have struggled with the public image of their faith. This challenge has persisted from early confrontations in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and territorial Utah to the ongoing attempt to gain acceptance within the broader streams of American culture. Media attention on
the peculiarities of Mormonism has shown that, as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emerges as a world faith, the challenges of understanding and respectability are far from over.

This conference will address the place of Mormonism in public discourse and examine the strategies involved in the Latter-day Saint response to skepticism and prejudice. Pertinent questions include: What are the current perceptions of Mormonism? What is the extent of misinformation? Have the attempts by Latter-day Saints to shape their image been successful? To what extent is media coverage accurate and fair? How has the Internet impacted public discussion of Mormonism?

Mormonism in the Public Mind
Perceptions of an Emerging World Faith

Schedule of Events
all sessions are free and open to the public (seating is limited)

Thursday, April 2
Lakeview Room
UVU Library (4th Floor)

8:30 – 9:45 a.m.
Welcome
Brian D. Birch
Director of Religious Studies, UVU
“Mormonisms”
Daniel Stout, University of Nevada Las Vegas
Dan Wotherspoon, Foundation for Interreligious Diplomacy

10:00 – 11:15 a.m.
Keynote Address
Michael Paulson
Religion Reporter, The Boston Globe

11:30 – 12:45 p.m.
Brownbag Lunch Panel
“The Mormon Beat”
Michael Paulson, Boston Globe
Lynn Arave, The Deseret News
Peggy Fletcher Stack, The Salt Lake Tribune
Jennifer Dobner, Associated Press

1:00 – 2:15 p.m.
“New Media and Pop Culture”
Jana Riess, Westminster John Knox Press
Stephen Carter, Sunstone Magazine
Kristine Haglund, Dialogue

2:30 – 3:45
“Symbols and Boundary Maintenance”
Joel Campbell, The Mormon Times
Charles Randall Paul, Foundation for Interreligious
Diplomacy
David Scott, Utah Valley University

7:00 p.m.
Eighth Annual Eugene England Lecture
Lakeview Room
“The Prehistory of the Soul”
Terryl L. Givens
Bostwick Professor of English, University of Richmond

Friday, April 3
Ragan Theater
UVU Student Center

8:30 – 9:45 a.m.
Welcome
Boyd J. Petersen
Program Coordinator for Mormon Studies, UVU
“Political Discourse and the Latter-day Saints”
Boyd Petersen, Utah Valley University
Kirk Jowers, Hinckley Institute of Politics
Morris Thurston, Joseph Smith Papers Project

10:00 – 10:50 a.m.
“Public Relations for the Twenty-First Century”
Val Edwards, LDS Public Affairs Department
Richard Bushman, Claremont Graduate University

11:00 – 11:50 p.m.
“LDS Public Relations: Strategies and Applications”
Gary Lawrence, Lawrence Research
Claudia Bushman, Claremont Graduate University

12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
Brownbag Lunch Panel
Val Edwards, Claudia Bushman,
Gary Lawrence, Richard Bushman

1:00 – 2:00 p.m.
“The Mormons in American Religious Thought”
Grant Underwood, Brigham Young University
Terryl Givens, University of Richmond
Brian Birch, Utah Valley University

2:00 – 3:00
Panel Discussion
Grant Underwood, Terryl Givens, Brian Birch

Bart Ehrman, Biblical Criticism, and Mormons

I suspect the FPR folks will accuse me of poaching a post from them, but this has popped up twice now in my email account, and I think it’s interesting. It comes from an interview with biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, who grew up as a biblical literalist, went to bible school, and after years of studying the differences in the variant manuscripts of the New Testament, embraced agnosticism. In the interview, Ehrman mentions Mormons:

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The *Top* Books in Mormon History/Studies

Periodically, historians conduct polls among themselves to determine the state of the field. I recently asked a couple dozen youngish historians what were, in their opinions, the top five books in Mormon history/studies today.  By “youngish” I mean under 40 and by “historian” I mean someone with academic training in history or a related discipline (I also included a couple ‘nacle participants who do not have academic training in history but are probably better read in Mormon history than most historians).

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From the Archives: Brigham Young on Joseph Smith’s Last Mistake

The following comes from a meeting of a “Special Council” held in Salt Lake on 21 March 1858. It is evidence, among other things, of Brigham Young’s contrarian streak. I’m sure it raised eyebrows 150 years ago, although probably not as many as it would raise today:

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Gendering the Memory of the Haun’s Mill Massacre

So, I am more than a little embarrassed that almost all of Women’s History month has passed and the JI has not published even one post on women and Mormonism. I was hoping to put together a more analytical post on how gender shaped some of the early Mormon narratives and poems written after the expulsion from Missouri, but that’s a project that will have to wait for now. But here is an Eliza R. Snow poem that describes the Haun’s Mill massacre. How does Snow use gender to shape the memory of the massacre?

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Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah: A Conference on 2 Nephi 26-27

Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah

Wednesday 15 April 2009

BYU HBLL Auditorium (1st floor)

9 Jenny Webb ?Slumbering Voices: Death and Textuality in 2 Nephi?

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Early Mormonism, the Expansiveness of Knowledge, and Religious Imagination

?The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.? ?John Keats

[This is not so much a scholarly post as it is a personal averment of one of my cherished aspects of Mormon thought. It may be too literature-heavy for many of JI?s readers, but that?s where my background is, and also a framework which I believe helps our understanding of the intellectual context of early Mormon thought.]

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