History and Presence, Chapter 2: “Abundant History”

Our Tuesdays with Orsi series continues today with a look at the second chapter. The series is a systematic engagement with Robert Orsi’s important and recently published book, History and Presence. See the first installment here and the second installment here.

As Ryan wrote last week, Orsi’s writing in the past dozen or so years has focused on the need to write about “presence” and “abundant events” in scholarship on religion. Following up on his first chapter arguing for an academic way of studying the presence of “the gods” as they appear and operate in the lives of individuals and religious groups, Orsi’s second chapter argues that scholars should take “abundant events” much more seriously. In doing so, Orsi seeks to help scholars overcome the methodological issues inherent to studying religion. As JI emeritus and scholar Steve Taysom puts it, “how [can] scholars of religion account for experiences that are simultaneously irrational and real?”[i] Orsi contends that the abundance of events surrounding when the “transcendent breaks into time” means that scholars must account for the “presence” of supernatural occurrences and beings in the lives of those they study. This necessarily draws upon anthropological and historical methodologies.

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Co-Sponsored Panels Between MHA and AHA

We are thrilled to share this announcement from Quincy Newell, a friend of JI and member of the Board of the Mormon History Association

Dear Members of the MHA:

Our organization is affiliated with the American Historical Association (AHA) and, as such, has the opportunity to co-sponsor sessions at the AHA’s annual meeting.   The next AHA annual meeting will take place January 4-7, 2018, in Washington, D.C.  More information is here.  Proposals for this meeting are due on February 15. If you are submitting a proposal to the AHA and would like the MHA to co-sponsor the session, please e-mail the following materials to Quincy D. Newell (qnewell@hamilton.edu) no later than February 8:

1. Session title
2. Participants’ names and institutional affliiations (if any)
3. Session abstract
4. Presentation abstracts.

For workshop, practicum, and experimental session proposals, please contact Quincy to determine the most appropriate materials to submit for MHA consideration.

Please note that co-sponsorship by the MHA in no way guarantees acceptance by the AHA program committee.  Nevertheless, we hope that you will seize this opportunity to represent our organization to our colleagues at the AHA!

Quincy D. Newell
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Hamilton College

Signs of the Times

I had a different post planned for this week, but I’ll save it for a time that feels less urgent.

I’m going to speak candidly and personally, as a historian, a unionized public-sector educator, a woman, a Mormon, a white Eastern liberal elite, and a born-American citizen. (Just so you know where my intersectionalities lie). It’s abundantly clear that the election results and Trump’s inauguration have abruptly ushered us all into a new political and cultural landscape.

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Mormons and Refugees: A Reading List from the Juvenile Instructor and Friends

Image courtesy of Ardis Parshall, keepapitchinin.org.

Some recommended reading from Juvenile Instructor bloggers and friends on the history of Mormonism and/as refugees:

• Christopher Jones, “‘For ye were strangers’: Four Short Vignettes on Mormon(s) and Refugees,” Juvenile Instructor. November 18, 2015.

• Edje Jeter, “Images: Woman’s Bondage, The Cave of Despair, and The Twin Relic,” Juvenile Instructor. January 6, 2015.

• Benjamin Park, “The Mormon Church, which Prizes Religious Freedom, is Silent on Trump,” Washington Post. January 28, 2017.

• David Grua, “‘We Weep When We Remember Zion’: Early Latter-day Saints as Refugees,” Perspectives on Church History, lds.org. July 6, 2016.

• David Grua, “Religious Liberty, Mormons, and Muslims,” Juvenile Instructor. December 16, 2015.

• W. Paul Reeve, “My View: Trump’s Muslim Ban Looks like Mormon Ban,” Deseret News. January 28, 2017.

• Ardis Parshall, “‘Our Lives are not Safe’: Armenian Latter-day Saints in the Genocide,” Keepapitchinin. June 11, 2014. See related posts here, here, here, and here. In fact, there’s too many relevant posts on Mormon refugees there to list individually. See headings for “Refugee” and“Syria” and “Armenia.”

• Michael Austin, “Newly discovered First Presidency Letter Clarifies Mormon Position on Civil Government,” By Common Consent. January 26, 2017.

• Emily Grover, “This is Not Us,” By Common Consent. January 28, 2017.

• Julie H. Smith, “Sometimes History Should Rhyme,” Times and Seasons. January 28, 2017.

History and Presence, Ch. 1: “The Obsolescence of the Gods”

Our Tuesdays with Orsi series continues this week–on Wednesday. The series is a systematic engagement with Robert Orsi’s important and recently published book, History and Presence. See the first installment here.

As Jeff discussed in last week’s post, Robert Orsi’s ultimate purposes in History and Presence are grand; he aims to fundamentally challenge the norms of contemporary religious studies and, indirectly, aspects of modernity as a whole. Through prolonged historical processes, he argues, ontological assumptions of “absence” and not “presence,” have surreptitiously come to typify the way that modern scholars approach and analyze religion. Presuppositions of “absence”–above all the assumption that the divine and human do not enter into intimate and consequential relationships–has produced an impoverished view of religion in general, and especially of Catholicism. Such is the endpoint of this powerful, complicated, and often elegant book.

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Call for MHA Awards–Deadline February 1

A note from MHA Board Member and friend of Juvenile Instructor, J.B. Haws, regarding submissions for MHA Awards.

One final call for nominations for the 2016 Mormon History Association awards! The deadline is next week?February 1!

We welcome nominations for article awards and graduate student work awards from anyone?authors, advisers, readers, fans, colleagues, etc. Because some authors are reticent about putting forward their own pieces, we need your help to identify excellent scholarship.

Nominations for article awards should be submitted to Sheree Bench at shereebench@msn.com. Nominations for graduate student work awards (dissertation, thesis, and unpublished graduate paper) should be submitted to Brian Birch at brian.birch@uvu.edu. Can we put out a special request to have those of you who work with graduate students to give extra attention to this? Please encourage your students and peers to submit their work?or feel free to send in their work for them!

Nominations for book awards should come directly from publishers. We ask publishers to submit 5 copies of nominated books. Publishers can contact our executive director, Rob Racker at mha.robracker@gmail.com, to get current mailing information for our book award committee members (the book awards committee is chaired by Tona Hangen).

Feel free to direct general questions about awards to J.B. Haws at jbhaws@byu.edu.

Thank you for helping the MHA celebrate outstanding work in the field of Mormon history!

Tuesdays with Orsi! History and Presence: Introduction

Come one, come all. Welcome to a new series that we’re hosting: Tuesdays with Orsi! The series will feature posts that highlight each chapter of Robert Orsi’s new and provocative History and Presence, and I have the honor of kicking it off.

Robert Orsi is the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies and Professor of Religion at Northwestern University. He is a prominent scholar of American religion and one of the foremost theorists/methodological innovators of the field. His scholarship has provoked us here at JI to think about what a Robert Orsi might look like for Mormon Studies, how “abundant events” might be used for Mormonism, and a highlight of a chat with Richard Bushman about abundant events. It’s no surprise that his newest work prompts us, yet again, to engage, digest, and grapple with truly provocative narrative and theory. The implications of the book are monumental. But enough gilding the lily. Let’s get to the introduction.

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What is “Early” Mormon History?

On Wednesday evening, I attended a public lecture by noted historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in which she talked about her recently-released book, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870. We have a review of the book forthcoming here at JI (spoiler alert: it’s good and you all should read it), as well as a Q&A with Dr. Ulrich, but for now I wanted to reflect on the final four words of the book’s title: “Early Mormonism, 1835-1870.”

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A Gem from the Local Archive: A Beginner’s Boston

When you live in a place over twenty years, and you come to know people who?ve lived there even longer than you, now and then you stumble over something in what we might call the local archives. Much of both the material and intellectual culture of Mormonism ? indeed, of any group through which a thread of commonality can be drawn ? never makes it into a formal archival collection. This is true even for old things, which have had more time to make their way out of private trunks, attics, and boxes into museums and historical societies and libraries. Just this week I saw someone on Twitter threatening to make a list of things offered for sale on eBay that, by rights, should belong in a public records office. But I daresay it?s even more true for things from recent history. For starters, no one fully knows which items of the endless detritus of the 20th century deserves preserving, and for seconds, a lot of it is still counted among living people?s prized possessions.

One of those possessions was recently lent to me by a friend. The provenance of this object is probably convoluted, but suffice it to say, it?s from the local archives, and there?s more where this came from. It?s uncatalogued. But it?s a gem, nonetheless.

The object in question is a revised 1973 edition of a book that was first published in 1966. Its author, whose name no doubt is familiar to all our readers, has just released a new book, which arrived crisp and thick in my mailbox this very week. But this is her very first book.

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George Q. Cannon Journals

This morning’s guest post comes from Richard Dilworth Rust, a missionary at the LDS Church History Library and who has worked on the George Q. Cannon project for the last several years.

On George Q. Cannon?s 190th birthday, January 11th, 2017, the Church Historian?s Press issued online George Q. Cannon?s journal for the period of 1876 to 1880.

The following are some of the events/topics that can be explored. Links to events are provided in the online list at the beginning of January each year.

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