By July 30, 2010
I feel like I’m the bearer of bad news lately. It has come to my attention that George P. Lee, the most famous product of the great surge of LDS interest in Native Americans that defined much of the post-World War II era, died this week in Provo.
By July 29, 2010
Peggy Pascoe, a leading historian of sexuality, gender and race relations in the American West, recently passed away after a bout with ovarian cancer. Her research and career path resulted in a few Mormon connections. Pascoe’s first major work, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939 examined Protestant female missionaries who established homes throughout the West to “reform” and help wayward women. One of her case studies included a home set up in Salt Lake City to help Mormon women who wished to escape from polygamy. The book remains one of the most influential and important books published on women in the West. Pascoe also published her magisterial What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, which treated miscegenation law broadly from Reconstruction through the late 20th century. Although What Comes Naturally does not include discussions of Mormons, the work includes important information that contextualizes our own troubled history with intermarriage. Pascoe’s other Mormon connection comes from her having taught at the University of Utah for a decade from 1986 to 1996. She’ll be missed.
By July 29, 2010
A friend alerted me not too long ago to an effort by a local in San Antonio, Texas to document the history of the LDS Church in his city. The site is called, The Saints of San Antonio: A Video History in Their Own Words.
By July 28, 2010
As promised, former JI blogger Elizabeth has teamed up with two other bright and thoughtful young historians of American religion to create a new and sorely needed blog. We are pleased to announce and endorse Scholaristas, a blog devoted to the study of women’s religious history by women. The bloggers describe themselves and their blog as follows:
By July 26, 2010
Desidrius Erasmus was the most learned man of his day and in the spirit of the Renaissance he sought to get back to the original sources of wisdom (often called Christian Humanism). For Erasmus this meant the Fathers over the Scholastics, Origin over Augustine and, of course, the Greek Bible (which he translated into Latin) over all. Said Erasmus (in a 16th century English translation) ?I wold to god they were translated in to the tonges of all men, so that they might not only be read and knowne of the scotes and yrishmen, but also of the Turkes and sarracenes ? I wold to god the plowman wold singe a texte of the scripture at his plowbeme.? [1]
This sentiment tends to be credited to William Tyndale the father of the English Bible:
By July 25, 2010
Read more here.
Without the full text* it is hard to assess the totality of what Elder Jensen sought to convey, but the report suggests a deviation from the standard Pioneer Day fare and an effort to reach out a hand of compassion and remembrance to those that are so often the forgotten or misremembered [see yesterday’s post by David G. on Pioneer Day and remembering/forgetting Utah’s Indian Wars] in Utah Pioneer history. One section from the report stands out to me:
By July 24, 2010
On Pioneer Day in 1941, the Provo branch of the Sons and Daughters of the Utah Pioneers erected a monument to honor the Ute Chief Sowiette for the aid he gave to Mormon settlements in early territorial Utah. The monument, which stands at the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum in Provo, has the following inscription:
By July 21, 2010
For my nightly and Sunday reading, I’ve recently decided to read academic biographies of Latter-day Saints. I’ve now finished Ron Walker’s Qualities That Count: Heber J. Grant as Businessman, Missionary, and Apostle, Arrington’s Brigham Young: American Moses, Brooks’ John D. Lee: Zealot, Pioneer, Builder, Scapegoat, Scott R. Christensen’s Sagwitch: Shoshone Chieftan, Mormon Elder, 1822-1887, and I’m currently working through Allen’s No Toil Nor Labor Fear: The Story of William Clayton. While I’ve enjoyed all of them, I think Allen’s is an extraordinary piece of scholarship, solidly researched and engagingly written. Aside from Bushman and Prince’s bios of JS and DOM, which I assume most JI readers are familiar with, what do y’all think are the “best LDS biographies”? For my purposes, I’m interested in works written by academic historians that are both well researched and written, rather than more devotional examples like George Q. Cannon’s JS bio.
By July 19, 2010
The newest issue of the JMH is here. Since I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll give a taste right now of what’s in here by posting the table of contents. Forgive the watermark. I’ll have more on the content later.
By July 17, 2010
We’ve discussed before the changing place of Brigham Young in scholarly discourses. For academics during much of the twentieth century, Young was far more interesting that Joseph Smith in the panorama of American history. In most of these works, Young was lauded for his organizational prowess and his intrepid leadership on the frontier. He was also seen as the savior of Mormonism, the great leader who picked up the pieces after Joseph Smith’s death. This image of Young fit the needs of American historians who, following Frederick Jackson Turner, believed that the essence of America was found on the frontier. Although academic interest in the frontier had waned by the 1980s, and with it much of the interest in Young as a frontiersman, it was in that decade that Leonard Arrington published his landmark study of the American Moses.
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