Dear Lord, Why Did I Go to Graduate School? Surviving Coursework

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog entry about graduate school and the feelings of inadequacy that I was having.  I promised a blog series on surviving graduate school.  After much thought I?ve decided to do it chronologically, which means ironically that this series starts with the section that I had the least amount of trouble with: coursework.  Coursework was bliss for me ? I love being around people and don?t have issues working on a deadline, so the sociality and structure were fantastic.  It?s the dissertation process, which is more solitary and less guided, that I struggle with.  Please add any suggestions or advice you have in the comments below.

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The Best of the “Mormon Moment”

As Patrick Mason rightly noted in his guest post on Friday, “the Mormon moment was good for Mormon studies”–even if it had, by now, worn out its welcome. Perhaps the most obvious result of the past two years was a deluge of columns, op-eds, essays, and articles designed to explain Mormonism to a curious audience. And by “deluge,” I mean “holy-crap-there-are-tons-of-new-stuff-ever-week-to-the-point-that-they-all-mesh-together.” So in attempt to make sure they don’t all fade from memory, this post tries to, with the help of friends, list some of my favorites. (I’m sure I’ve forgotten many–that’s where you come in handy: if you suggest something I find very important, I’ll even add it to the list.) If I had more time/interest, I would try to outline some of the major lessons and offer a general narrative arc of where the “moment” went over the past two years, but I’ll save that for someone else.

Below, you will find the author, title, venue, date, summary, and brief excerpt from what I remember to be the “best” of the Mormon moment coverage. Please add any that I missed in the comments, as well as take issue with/challenge some of my selections.

(And to the future historian who was looking for sources when anaylizing this “Mormon moment”: you’re welcome.)

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Southwestern States Mission: Dyeing Clothes

I wish you all a thoughtful and thankful Veterans Day. After a three-month break, I?m restarting the “Southwestern States Mission series” (homepage). A few months ago clothes dyeing came up in the Jones diary at Keepapitchinin:

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Guest Post: Patrick Mason, “Why Romney’s Loss is Good for Mormon Studies”

[We are pleased to host this contribution from JI’s good friend Patrick Mason, Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Mason holds a PhD in history from Notre Dame University, and his first book, The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (Oxford UP, 2011), has received great praise. His work can be found, well, everywhere nowadays, and is currently working on (at least) two projects: a volume, co-edited with David Pulsipher, on a distinctive Mormon theology of ethics and peace, as well as a biography of Ezra Taft Benson, which will explore the rise of both Mormonism and the Religious Right. For Part II of his commentary, this time on the ramifications of Romney’s loss on Mormonism in general, see his post at Peculiar People.]

The Mormon Moment was good for Mormon Studies.  It raised the profile of Mormonism in universities, media outlets, churches, and living room conversations across the country.  The fact that a devout Latter-day Saint was a serious contender for the White House made his religion a serious topic of conversation, even for people who find the religion?s faith claims anything but serious.  Like it or not, academics, journalists, and public intellectuals learned, Mormonism is a force to be reckoned with.

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The Mountain Meadows Massacre in Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet

Brigham Young ?has never been less than the tyrant of the Mormon church, and if there does not cleave his soul today the deadly crime of wholesale murder in the massacre of Mountain Meadow, there will be forever, probably, cleave to his name the guilt of that awful slaughter, in the conviction of the American people, who would have indulged in no reprehensible joy, if he had been brought to the bar of human justice for that and the involved iniquities that defame his memory and disgrace his name.?[1]

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Romney Lost. Is the Mormon Moment Over? And What Would That Mean, Anyway?

Mitt Romney hoped to be the Mormon JFK. Instead, he will now go down in the history books as the Mormons? Al Smith ? the Roman Catholic who was nominated for the presidency by the Democratic Party in 1928, but lost to Calvin Coolidge in part because of anti-Catholic prejudice.

But I?m not interested in how long it will be before we elect our first Mormon president. I?m more interested in the so-called ?Mormon Moment,? and what the end of Mitt Romney?s political career means for the place of Mormons in American culture. With Romney (and his ubiquitous political ads) out of the spotlight, will the Latter-day Saints now fade from the national stage? Will Americans forget about their odd Mormon neighbors and move on to lambasting and lampooning someone else?

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The Mormon Reformation in Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet

The Mormon Reformation is a period in LDS History that has long been of interest to scholars working in the field. Paul Peterson, Leonard Arrington, Thomas Alexander, D. Michael Quinn, Will Bagley, Paul Peterson, and others have all written about the reformation and have grappled with its cause(s) and meaning(s). In the interest of full disclosure, a chapter from my recent book Shakers, Mormons and Religious Worlds (Indiana University Press 2011) also addresses the subject of the Mormon reformation. John Turner takes a turn as well in his new biography of Brigham Young. Turner’s material on the reformation represents a fine synthesis of some of the most recent work on the subject, and as such it has value beyond the descriptive function.

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CFP: No Person Shall Bee Any Wise Molested: Religious Freedom, Cultural Conflict, and the Moral Role of the State

A conference planned for October 3 – 6, 2013, in Newport and Providence, Rhode Island, organized by the Newport Historical Society, the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, Salve Regina University, the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom, the John Carter Brown Library, and Brown University to mark the 350th anniversary of the 1663 Rhode Island Charter.

Lecture Report: Janet Bennion and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich on “The Faces of Eve: Varieties of Mormon Feminism”

On Thursday, October 25, Janet Bennion, Professor of Anthropology at Lyndon State College in Vermont, delivered a lecture, ?The Faces of Eve: Varieties of Mormon Feminism,? at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University. Professor Bennion is an expert on the contemporary practice of polygamy among Mormon fundamentalists, and the author of several books on the subject. Bennion?s lecture focused on her most recent book, Polygamy in Primetime: Media, Gender, and Politics in Mormon Fundamentalism, which she presented as a synthesis of her more than twenty years of research among polygamous groups in North America. Her goal, she said, was to produce a readable work that would educate the general public about these groups, as well as better preparing law enforcement officials to deal with them?and thus to avoid another event like the ill-managed 2008 raid on the FLDS Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas.

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Mormon-Indian Relations in Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet

John Turner assumed a tall task when he decided to write a biography of Brigham Young, a larger than life personality who, after Joseph Smith, was the defining figure in nineteenth-century Mormonism. Young was a key participant in the church’s founding years and was the driving force behind the Mormon settlement of the Great Basin. As Amanda noted in her contribution to this roundtable, the sheer scope of Young’s life required Turner to not only familiarize himself with a mountain of primary sources, but also the extensive and growing secondary literature on various facets of the second Mormon prophet’s life and environment. She also fairly notes that no biographer (except, perhaps, Richard Bushman) can be reasonably expected to competently cover all parts of a subject’s life equally, which will doubtless leave some readers disappointed. Brigham Young’s engagement with and impact on the Natives of the Great Basin was one area that Turner sought to contextualize within a broader secondary literature and, for the most part, he was highly successful.

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