Juvenile Instructor » 2012

Guest Post: Joseph Stuart Recaps John Turner’s BYU Presentation

By Ben PSeptember 16, 2012

[From JI’s good friend Joseph Stuart.]

Before getting to my summary, many thanks to Brian Cannon, Jessie Embry, and the Charles H. Redd Center for making Professor Turner?s visit possible. It is incredibly difficult to bring open forum speakers to BYU; their efforts (and the Redd Center?s funds) made the biography and the visits possible.

Now, to the notes?

Turner?s argument took shape in the juxtaposition of two stories: The English mission (1840) and an early ?trial? in 1849.

1840: Brigham was at Manchester, England, and nearly 40 years old, a convert of only 8 years. He was now the President of the Twelve, and was leading the Church’s mission to England and had “exactly one wife.” After six weeks in England, there had been scores, even hundreds of converts. One night, while visiting a family, HCK and BY sang and spoke in tongues. BY was disappointed that the Manchester Mormons had not yet received the Gift of Tongues. After English holiday that celebrated Pentecost, the English Saints wanted a display of the religious gifts present in Acts 2. In his diary, Brigham Young said that he and Parley Pratt talked for ?some time about the necessity of the Saints having the spirit of God.” The Saints tried to display ?gifts,? and one Brother Green ?almost spoke in tongues? (Turner quipped that the words were on the ?tip of his tongue? and ?tongue tied?). Brigham then spoke and sang in tongues, and many English Saints followed, one woman being able to speak in 7 different languages.

Nate?s Notes: The 2012 Church History Symposium

By Nate R.September 15, 2012

So these have been a long time coming, and I?m sure I have forgotten a number of highlights I didn?t get a chance to jot down during the presentations I attended. The 2012 Church History Symposium was held March 2 and 3, jointly hosted by the Church History Department and BYU?s Religious Studies Center and themed on the life and times of Joseph F. Smith. The RSC is planning on publishing selected speeches from the symposium sometime in early 2013, and has pledged to post video proceedings on their website (they have only M. Russell Ballard’s keynote address available currently)?but in the meantime I thought it would be good to have some discussion on the conference here at the good ol’ JI blog.

Review: Journals 2 and the Boggs Extradition

By David G.September 14, 2012

Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Richard Lloyd Anderson, eds., Journals, Volume 2: December 1841-April 1843 in The Joseph Smith Papers, gen. eds. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian?s Press, 2011). xl, 558 pp. Cloth: $54.95; ISBN: 978-1-60908-737-1.

On October 2, 1841, Joseph Smith deposited in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon, a first edition Doctrine and Covenants, a Bible, and other items deemed sufficiently important to preserve for future generations. Among these was a memorial to the U.S. Senate describing the Latter-day Saints’ persecutions in Missouri and a history of the persecutions published in the Times and Seasons. The addition of these two histories to a repository that included sacred writ demonstrated the degree to which the Latter-day Saints were committed to writing about their persecutions and preserving their writings for subsequent readers. As sociologist Jeffrey K. Olick has noted, “collective memory” is not a single or monolithic “thing,” but a “wide variety of mnemonic products and practices,” which only “gain reality by being used, interpreted, and reproduced or changed.”[1] Early Mormon writings on persecution, then, are best understood as mnemonic products that were gradually “used, interpreted, and reproduced” as they shaped how Mormons and others remembered the past.

Martha Hughes Cannon: Physician ? Plural Wife ? Politician

By Andrea R-MSeptember 13, 2012

The Mormon Women?s History Initiative

invites you to an evening of insights into the KUED documentary film

Guest Post: Rosemary Avance, “Why in the world would a non-Mormon study the Church, anyway?”

By Ben PSeptember 12, 2012

Rosemary Avance is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania?s Annenberg School for Communication where she studies the intersection of religion, culture, and the media. She is currently the recipient of the Eccles Mormon Studies Fellowship at the University of Utah?s Tanner Humanities Center. She is spending the year in residence in Salt Lake City, researching and writing her dissertation on modern Mormon identities.

I?m so pleased to be guest posting here at JI?one of my favorite blogs and an important source for keeping up with modern Mormon identities. My dissertation is on just that topic: how Mormons today negotiate their identities, and particularly how the internet plays a role in the articulation of various heterodoxies. I?ve been hesitant to comment or post here and elsewhere in the bloggernacle because my research tracks, in part, representations of Mormonism in real time?so contributing to those representations by offering my ?take? threatens to, essentially, muddy my data. Despite all the blogs, message boards, and Facebook pages, it turns out that Mormondom online is actually quite a small world.

But I?m pleased for the opportunity to introduce myself and my academic work, so my plan is to offer a bit of my theoretical orientation to LDS identities, explain my interest and background, and then maybe complain a bit. Because the work I?m doing is ? at the moment?incredibly frustrating.

Job Opening in BYU’s Department of Church History & Doctrine

By Ben PSeptember 11, 2012

JI’s good friend Rachel Cope passed along the news that BYU’s Church History and Doctrine Department are looking for applicants. You can find all the information you need at this site. (Click on “Search Positions” on the left-hand side of the page, then on “Job Type” click on “Full Time” for “Job Category” click “Faculty.” You will then click on the opening for Church History and Doctrine. Note: do not choose the option labeled “Professional,” unless you want to apply for a teaching position that teaches 6-7 courses per semester, each with over 100 students. The other option has a smaller teaching load with larger research expectations.) Below is the most relevant information:

Rape and Marriage in Mormon History

By AmandaSeptember 10, 2012

Note: In response to the complaints in response to Saskia?s blog post and its use of a few curse words, I feel obligated to warn readers that this post and its responses may contain some light vulgarity and adult topics. Anyone not mature enough to handle such language or topics should not read the post.

A few weeks ago, I went to a conference on Mormon women held at the University of Utah. The room was filled with elderly feminists who had advocated for a more liberal Mormon view of women in the 1980s, middle-aged women who had commandeered their husbands into watching the kids for a few hours, and graduate students dressed in jeans and t-shirts. The panels were varied but held together by a common focus on Mormon women and a desire to make some sort-of change in the way that women are treated in a church that privileges male experience and male members. One of the presentations that was particularly poignant was Jennifer Finlayson-Fife?s presentation on the sexuality of Mormon women. She described the difficulty created by expectations that young women be sexually attractive and chaste at the same. When unwanted sexual intimacy occurs, Mormon girls are stuck between allowing him to continue, risking their purity and standing before God, and saying ?no? and losing his interest. As a result, many Mormon women feel guilty for sexual contact they neither wanted nor consented to.

Announcement: John Turner’s Utah Tour this Week

By ChristopherSeptember 10, 2012

For our Utah readers, friend of JI and author of the recently-released Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet John Turner will be speaking about his book at locations along the Wasatch Front. If you’re around, be sure and make it a point to attend. Here’s the schedule:

Review: Anne Hyde’s Empires, Nations, and Families

By David G.September 9, 2012

Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860, by Anne F. Hyde. History of the American West Series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. xiii-xv, 628 pp.

The great project of turning the West into part of the United States, initiated in 1803 and begun in earnest in the 1840s, had made little progress in many places. Much remained flexible and contingent about life on its complex border into the second half of the nineteenth century. Residents of the West seemed quite ambivalent about nationality, easily claiming new citizenship when it served personal or business needs. During a time when no one knew which nation or empire would finally impose control, effective trade was the sole source of power. And it continued to be a world defined by personal connections. (30)

So argues Anne Hyde, Professor of History at Colorado College, in Empires, Nations, and Families, winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize earlier this year.

Negotiation on the Internet: the Mormon Hey Girl Meme

By Mees TielensSeptember 7, 2012

Memes are an obligatory part of the internet. They?re eagerly shared through Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and other on-line social media sites. They occasionally make it off-line, finding their way onto someone?s cubicle wall or refrigerator door. And I bet most people have had their mom innocently forward them a meme or two, most likely featuring a cat. Memes are everywhere.