Art + Belief: #MHA50 Session Preview

The sixties beget all kinds of social experiments, and even Mormons were not immune to the call of the bohemian zeitgeist of their times. It may interest you to know that in the late 1960s there was an artists’ commune in the foothills of Alpine, Utah, calling themselves the Art & Belief Movement. Four artists – sculptor Neil Hadlock, figurative artist Dennis Smith, symbolist realist Gary Ernest Smith, and romantic realist Trevor Southey – and their families formed the core of the group. Though as transitory as many hippie communes of the era, this Mormon version is worth a closer look.

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Let her be an Ensign.

Two years ago, I wrote a post called, ?In the Ghetto: I Like It Here, but When Can I Get Out?? I lamented the separation of Mormon women?s history from the general narrative of the church. Having people read what you?ve written is always lovely, but it is exponentially better when someone continues to think about something you?ve written and then chooses to do something about it. Thank you, Ardis.

Ardis Parshall–the mastermind behind the Mormon history blog Keepapitchinin–has moved to act. Always one to go above and beyond, Ardis has begun a daunting project of writing a broad synthesis of Mormon history written from the perspective of women–She Shall Be an Ensign. And she needs our support.

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My Dissertation Writing Process Tools (or how I almost got it done)

I have been absent from the blog for quite some time (yes over a year 🙁 ) But I am back to write about?my dissertation writing process. Future posts will be back to our fave topic of Mormon history. However, I know many of us are writers, researchers, and scholars and are regularly engaged in some form of writing.

Now, this is not a prescriptive post about how to write the dissertation. In fact, it is far from it. Instead, I am going to share some of the tools that were and are essential to my writing.

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On Footnotes: Thoughts, Rants, and Peeves

Since I lead a very exciting life, foot/endnotes are something I think about fairly frequently: How many? How long? How detailed? Foot or end? To excerpt or merely to cite? And so on. In an attempt to clarify my thinking, I have sketched a few thoughts, rants, and peeves.

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JI Summer Book Club: Rough Stone Rolling, Part 3: Chapters 5 ? 6

This is the third installment of the first annual JI Summer Book Club. This year we are reading Richard Bushman?s landmark biography of Mormonism?s founder, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). JI bloggers will be covering small chunks of the book in successive weeks through the summer, with new posts appearing Monday mornings. We invite anyone and everyone interested to read along and to use the comment sections on each post to share your own reflections and questions.

Installments:

• Part 1: Prologue, Chapters 1-2
• Part 2: Chapters 3-4
• This week (Part 3): Chapters 5-6
• Next week (Part 4): Chapters 7-9

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MHA Hotel Registration and Final Program

The following message is from our friends at The Mormon History Association: 

Have you reserved your room yet for the fast-approaching MHA conference? MHA has arranged for a discounted room rate of just $99/night at the conference hotel, the Provo Marriott. Call 801-377-4700 to make your reservations. Be sure to mention MHA to receive the group rate. If you are interested in finding a roommate to share the cost of the room, send us an email to 2015conference@mormonhistoryassociation.org and we’ll assist you. Type “room share” in the email’s subject line when you contact us.

#MHA50

$99 for a Marriott room is a fantastic bargain if you don’t have accommodations arranged, please take advantage of this deal. Then you don’t have to worry about driving home from the conference at night, driving to the conference in the morning, or the burden of forgetting something important in your hotel room. If costs are an issue, there are many folks looking to share a room to defer costs. Be sure to take advantage of the MHA’s offer to line you up with a roommate who is as interested in Mormon History as you are!

You can also view the final program for the conference here: MHA Program-Final. See you in Provo!

Paul Reeve Roundtable – Mormonism and Orientalism, Conclusion

For this roundtable, I was asked to give my reactions to the last two chapters: Reeve’s chapter on Mormons and Orientalism and the conclusion. I also want to provide a few thoughts in summation. I’ll try to keep the post relatively brief.

As I was reading the book, one of the things that occurred to me is that the real meat of the book lies in the chapters on Native Americans and African Americans. I agree with previous posters that Reeve has done some excellent work thinking about the racialization of Mormons affected Mormonism’s internal racial politics. At times, however, I found Reeve’s discussion of the conflation between Native Americans and Mormons unsettling. At times, he seemed to be suggesting that the creation of a Missouri county for Mormons was the same as Indian Reservations. Like Christopher Smith, I found myself wanting Reeve to add a reminder that white Mormons retained access to certain rights that other groups did not. They did so because of their skin color.

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Images: ?Scenes in the Endowment Ceremonies? in Beadle

Note: today?s post deals with temple ordinances, which can be a sensitive topic. Please tread considerately.

Today?s image, ?Scenes in the Endowment Ceremonies,? allegedly depicts portions of the Mormon ordinance of temple endowment. So far as I can tell, ?Scenes? first appeared in John H Beadle?s Life in Utah: or, The Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism (1870), which—if the title didn?t give it away—takes a dim view of Mormonism. Beadle reused the image in 1882 and again in 1904. [1] 

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Roundtable on Paul Reeve, RELIGION OF A DIFFERENT COLOR: Black, White, and Mormon, pt. 2

Miscegenation and “One Drop”

The sixth and seventh chapters of Paul Reeve’s Religion of a Different Color focus on the six decades after plural marriage became public in 1852. In these chapters, Reeve examines the intertwining of polygamy and blackness after the 1856 presidential election, and how Mormonism’s racial restriction on priesthood/tem

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JI Summer Book Club: Rough Stone Rolling, Part 2: Chapters Three and Four

This is the second installment of the first annual JI Summer Book Club. This year we are reading Richard Bushman’s landmark biography of Mormonism founder, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). JI bloggers will be covering several small chunks of the book (typically 2-3 chapters) in successive weeks through the summer. New posts will appear on Monday mornings.We invite anyone and everyone interested to join along. Please use the comment section on each post to post your own reflections and commentary on the chapters under consideration and ask questions. This week Steve Fleming takes a closer look at Chapters 3 (“Translation: 1827-30”) and 4 (“A New Bible: 1830”).

Previous installments in the series:

Part I: Prologue, Chapters 1-2

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3 Translation, 4 A New Bible (See part 1 here).

Bushman ends Chapter Two and begins Chapter Three by discussing how to make sense of the possible connections between the Smiths’ “magical” treasure-digging activities and Mormonism’s foundational events: receiving and translating the golden plates. Such similarities include seer stones, special treasure in the ground, and treasure guardians.

Bushman concedes that “Magic and religion melded in Smith family culture,” (51) but he argues that by 1827, the year he married Emma and received the plates, “magic had served its purpose in his life. In a sense, it was a preparatory gospel. Treasure-seeking lore may have made it easier for his father to believe his son’s fabulous story about an angel and gold plates” (54). Thus treasure digging played a “preparatory” role in the beginnings of Mormons, argues Bushman, and the treasure-digging elements in the events related to the golden plates played the purposed of Smith gaining his treasure-digging father’s support.

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