By Tod R.July 21, 2012
I came across an intriguing article not long ago, published in a 1927 issue of the Cumorah Monthly Bulletin. The Bulletin was the official publication of the South African Mission from 1927-1970.[1] I suppose you know what’s coming next based on the title of this post, so I might as well get right to it.
WHO MAY BEAR THE PRIESTHOOD?
This is a subject of frequent inquiry in the South African Mission, where so many good people are unable to declare, with certainty, a genealogy pure from the Hamite or Canaanitish blood.[2]
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By ChristopherJuly 20, 2012
To whom it may concern:
I’m thrilled that you’ve taken an interest in Mormon studies. I think that there is much interdisciplinary work to be done in this emerging (sub)field and welcome the perspectives you bring from your own discipline. There seems to be some confusion on your end, though, about what historians do. Let me try and assuage your concerns by assuring you of two things:
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By J. StapleyJuly 19, 2012
The ecology of Mormon History has tremendous benefits. Among them are deeply committed institutional patrons, obsessive readership, and dedicated amateur researchers willing to slog through enormous volumes of minutiae. Some of these benefits can also yield challenges. I’d like to focus on one in particular: Denominational histories that even when not overtly devotional are disconnected from the historiography and analytical trends of religious history more broadly.
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By AmandaJuly 18, 2012
A few months ago, in a post called The Mormon Body Project, I asked what a history of Mormon women and their relationship to their bodies would be like. How did Mormon garments with their emphasis upon modesty and purity change the way that women thought about their menstrual cycles, their breasts, and other intimate aspects of their bodies? Did Mormon theology and its emphasis upon the divinity of the body allow Mormon women to develop more positive ideas about their body? And, finally, how did Mormon institutions like Young Women?s and Relief Society help girls manage the transition from childhood to adolescence?
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By July 17, 2012
We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that Jonathan Stapley has agreed to join the Juvenile Instructor on a more permanent basis. He likely needs no introduction to regular readers, but for anyone unfamiliar, Jonathan is an independent researcher in Mormon history who has authored and co-authored prize-winning articles on Mormon women, ritual healing, and baptism. He is also widely known for his stellar blogging at By Common Consent, and has been an invaluable friend and reader of JI from the beginning (he designed and currently hosts the site, and regularly handles IT issues for us). Recently, J. has very graciously participated in two of the initial three entries in our “Responses” series.
J. will continue doing his thing at BCC, but will also begin posting here on a regular basis. Please join us in officially welcoming J. Stapley to the Juvenile Instructor.
By Ben PJuly 17, 2012
In many ways, the strength of Mormon studies can be measured by the number of quality voices. It is in that vein that we at JI happily welcome another Mormon studies blog to the fold: Worlds Without End. Here is how they describe themselves:
Worlds Without End: A Mormon Studies Roundtable is a group blog for friendly, high-quality academic conversation about Mormon religious worlds and their larger contexts, connections, and consequences. Participants have been carefully selected for their intelligence, diversity of perspectives, and friendly, constructive, respectful styles of discourse.
The use of the term ?conversation? is deliberate. Worlds Without End is intended to be academic, but not dry or impersonal. We strive to produce quality content that will be of interest to academics as well as hobbyists, but we also work hard to balance this with humor, pictures, and a warm and lively communal atmosphere. Contributors to Worlds Without End don?t ?bracket? their personalities here. We believe our personal beliefs, experiences, and voices are part of what make us interesting and give significance to the things we write. Writing in our own voices is an invitation for readers to connect and engage with us on a personal as well as an intellectual level. It is also, however, an act of vulnerability, so please be considerate in your interactions with us.
Worlds Without End, ultimately, is more than a blog. It?s a vision of one possible future for the discipline. We strive to model the openness, insight, creativity, and verve that we believe represent the ideal way forward for Mormon Studies.
As a fellow group blog who shares many of those ideals, we heartily welcome them and look forward to their contributions. Many of their contributors are good friends to JI, and others we hope to get to know more.
By Ben PJuly 16, 2012
The last few years have been a coronation of sorts for Richard Bushman–and rightfully so. After a prolific and prestigious career, the American Historical Association devoted a session to his work, the Mormon History Association distinguished him with their Leonard Arrington Award, and a group of former students held a conference in his honor. (I wrote my reflections of the conference here.) The most recent issue of Journal of Mormon History includes many of the papers presented at that last conference, including several JIers. I just finished the entire issue last weekend, and concluded it was probably the strongest JMH issue in years, as nearly every article was at an exceptionally high level of academic standards.
(It should be noted, however, that the issue as a whole was strong in a few very, very narrow fields: Joseph Smith’s thought, Mormonism and political thought, and historical thought in general. See a pattern? Now this is primarily the result of the participants’ building off of Richard Bushman’s own work–a commemorative issue in honor of Jill Derr would probably look much different, for instance–so the lack of engagement with the 20th century, material culture, lived religion, or, gasp, women’s history can, at least partially, be overlooked. But since these themes tend to dominate Mormon history in general, I maintain the “partially” qualifier.)
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By Edje JeterJuly 15, 2012
Missionaries sent a report to mission administrators every week. In theory, conference secretaries mailed instructions to each companionship Thursday evenings, which the Elders retrieved Mondays when they sent their weekly reports. [1] Below are photos of the report books of Elder Calvin H Chandler, who served in the Southwestern States Mission from 1899 to 1901. [2]
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By Tod R.July 12, 2012
I want to start off this post by thanking you for your kindness since my first post. The feedback and general excitement I received via comments and email was palpable and kind of amazing.
The announcement I am now making is closely related to my work on the Saints of Alberta Project (SAP), which is still taking shape thanks to your comments. The Dictionary of Mormon Biography (DMB) is a new site, which will shortly become a platform like unto a Wikipedia, for Mormon biography. Currently, the site is a mockup of the kind of database I’d like to and am assembling though the next iteration will run on a similar software to Wikipedia: Semantic Mediawiki.
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By Jared TJuly 11, 2012
The most recent issue of Mormon Historical Studies arrived in the mail today (Fall 2011, 12:2). I was thrilled to see that one of the essays included is Elder Marlin K. Jensen’s July 24, 2010 Sons of the Utah Pioneers Sunrise Service lecture which we drew attention to here nearly two years ago (also, see David G.’s related post about Remembering and Forgetting Utah’s Indian Wars). At the time, many expressed a hope that his remarks would be published in full, and thanks to Mormon Historical Studies, that hope is reality. I will be providing a longer review of the issue in the next few days, but I wanted to note the inclusion of this talk and provide this excerpt which is given under a bolded heading:
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