The Church History Department announces an opening for a historian/writer with an emphasis on the global history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Duties will include researching and writing, in collaboration with others, histories of the global Church for both scholarly and member audiences.
This is the third post in a roundtable on Quincy D. Newell’s Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019). Find the first and second here
Newell knows the value of a good story, but she is also wary of the simplistic historical messages that such stories send. Newell is critical of the scholars of religious history who tell only the liberatory story of Biddy Mason*, an African American woman who sued and won her freedom in a California court, and not that of Jane Manning James who repeatedly and unsuccessfully petitioned white male church leaders to receive her temple endowments. Newell critiques this absence in the historiographical record but she is also wary of the narratives that do get told about Jane. In the post-1978 era, after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lifted the temple and priesthood ban on its black members, historians and members alike have searched for racial diversity in the Church’s beginnings. They have resurrected Jane’s story because it highlights this diversity and, more importantly, because it shows her close interactions with the movement’s founder, Joseph Smith. Newell is, however, also unsatisfied with these narratives. She writes:
as a scholar of American religious history, I often find these popular representations of Jane James deeply discomfiting. The stereotypes of blackness, the “traditional” constructions of femininity, and the selective presentations of fact that they employ make me squirm. They flatten Jane’s experience, tidying up the messiness of her life. (4)
Newell’s book therefore serves as a counter to this easy narrative about Jane. It is the anecdote to excluding Jane from the historical record and to over-simplifying Jane.
This is the second post in a roundtable on Quincy D. Newell’s Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019). Read the first post here. (I would alternately title it—Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps—if anyone out there needed a Cake reference.)
There is much to appreciate in Quincy Newell’s new biography of Jane Manning James. She has masterfully fleshed out an illuminating and complex narrative of a paradoxical life marked by documentary absence more than presence, more atypical than common. Quoting what was perhaps Jane’s final plea for participation in temple rites to Joseph F. Smith—Latter-day Saint church president, the title offers the motivating paradox
This is
the first post in a roundtable on Quincy D. Newell’s Your
Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century
Black Mormon (Oxford University Press,
2019). Look for more posts in the coming week!
Quincy Newell’s biography of Jane Manning James is a concise, informative study of one of the best-known Latter-day Saints of African descent. It is not the first study, nor the last, to examine Jane’s life and faith.[i] Born a free woman in Connecticut and buried a free woman in Salt Lake City, Jane James’ experiences are a crucial part of any study of Mormonism and people of African descent. Newell notes in the introduction that Jane’s life is “comparatively well-documented…she left multiple accounts narrating her personal history, some of which were published during her lifetime, and she appears in many other sources, including other people’s diaries, meeting minutes, and church and government records” (1). Despite the presence of these sources, many parts of Jane’s life remain mysterious to historians.
For all the words left behind by Jane, or about Jane, two words
repeatedly used by Newell stick out to me.
The “Quick and
Dirty Topic Model” is a sneak-peek at a larger project that will be released
with Better Days 2020, which is
the sesquicentennial celebration of women’s suffrage and the centennial of the
19th Amendment. It sounds like the results of the later slow and thorough
topic model will be released in a digital and explorable format with the Better
Days celebrations.
The 55th Annual Conference of the Mormon
History Association will be held June 4-7, 2020, in Rochester/Palmyra, New
York. The 2020 conference theme, “Visions, Restoration, and Movements”
commemorates the 200th anniversary of Mormonism’s birth in upstate
New York. Joseph Smith’s religious movement has grown from a fledgling frontier
faith to a diverse set of religious and cultural traditions functioning across
the globe. Members of Mormonism’s many branches are found among people of
different colors, languages, and nationalities. Consequently, Mormonism shapes
and has shaped the lives of millions of adherents and their neighbors from its
founding to the present.
People from all
of Mormonism’s branches have proven visionary in building their congregations
across the globe, in humanitarian efforts to relieve suffering and rebuild
communities, in political activism, caring for the environment, and other
actions which sometimes push back against accepted traditions, policies and
structures. Transformational activism
was a key feature of Mormonism from the beginning, born as it was in a
landscape of peoples and movements who changed the world around them–
constructing the Erie Canal, “burning” with religious fervor in the
Second Great Awakening, nurturing abolitionists and the fight for Black
liberation, and producing the struggle for women’s rights and suffrage.
On Memorial Day in 2019, 50-60 people gathered to participate in a monument dedication for Hark Lay Wales, a formerly enslaved African American man buried in Utah’s Union Cemetery. Wales, pronounced either like “whales” or “Wallace,” depending upon the person you speak to, lived and died in Utah Territory. He was enslaved by the William Lay family who converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mississippi. Wales entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 with the first company of Latter-day Saints.
There is no definitive, published proof that he was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though sources have told Juvenile Instructor that information will be forthcoming on centuryofblackmormons.org which suggest Hark may have identified as a Latter-day Saint at some point in his life. For a full overview of Hark’s life, please consult this piece by Amy Tanner Thiriot on Keepapitchinin.
The program preceding the dedication was remarkable for several reasons. First, it was presided over, guided by, and featured nearly all Black speakers, both Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint. Many of Utah’s and the LDS Church’s best and brightest spoke or sang at the event, including Robert and Alice Faulkner Burch, Marlin Lynch III, Tekulve Jackson-Vann, Salt Lake City Fire Chief Jeff Thomas, Yahosh Bonner, Utah State Representative Sandra Hollins, David Hollins, Andra Johnson, Nate Byrd, & Byron Williams, and the lone white speaker, Sheri Orton. Robert Burch dedicated the grave through prayer and Melodie Jackson, Garrett Whiting, and Sierra Rose unveiled the headstone.
Congratulations to all of the winners! JI-ers are in bold.
Individual Awards
Leonard J. Arrington Award: Kathleen Flake
Special Citation: Larry H. Miller, Gail Miller, and Kim Wilson
Book Awards
Best Book: Jonathan A. Stapley, The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Best Book Honorable Mentions: Colleen McDannell, Sister Saints: Mormon Women since the End of Polygamy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); James Swensen, In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2018).
Best Biography: Daniel P. Stone, William Bickerton: Forgotten Latter Day Prophet (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2018).
Best International Book: James A. Toronto, Eric R. Dursteler, and Michael W. Homer, Mormons in the Piazza: History of the Latter-day Saints in Italy (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2018).
Best International Book Honorable Mention: Julie K. Allen, Danish but Not Lutheran: The Impact of Mormonism on Danish Cultural Identity 1850-1920 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2018).
Best Person History/Memoir: Vella Neil Evans, My Father’s People: Journeys Across a Landscape of Hope (Self-Published)
Article Awards
Best Article: Matthew McBride. “’Female Brethren’: Gender Dynamics in a Newly Integrated Missionary Force, 1898-1915.” Journal of Mormon History 44, no. 4 (October 2018): 40-67.
Best Article on Mormon Women’s History: Kathryn H. Shirts. “The Role of Susa Young Gates and Leah Dunford Widtsoe in the Historical Development of the Priesthood-Motherhood Model.” Journal of Mormon History 44, no. 2 (April 2018): 104-139.
Best Article on International Mormonism: Erik J. Freeman, “’True Christianity’: The Flowering and Fading of Mormonism and Romantic Socialism in Nineteenth-Century France.” Journal of Mormon History 44, no. 2 (April 2018): 75-103.
Article Award of Excellence: Joseph R. Stuart. “’A More Powerful Effect upon the Body’: Early Mormonism’s Theory of Racial Redemption and American Religious Theories of Race.”Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 87, no. 3 (September 2018): 768-796.
JMH Article Award: William G. Hartley, “Brethren, It’s the Last Day of the Month’: A History of Ward Teaching, 1912-1963,” 44/4.
Student Awards
Best Dissertation Award: Megan Ann Stanton, “All in the Family: Ecclesiastical Authority and Family Theology in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Best Unpublished Graduate Student Paper: David Dmitri Hurlbut, “Unmasking a Peculiar People: The Entry of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints into Mission in Southeastern Nigeria, 1962-1966” (Boston University)
Research Historian, Joseph Smith Papers, (Contingent)–Church History Department
PURPOSES
The Church History Department announces an opening for a Research Historian with the Joseph Smith Papers project. The successful candidate will assist the Joseph Smith Papers in the Publications Division of the Church History Department with historical and textual research for volumes in the Papers’ Documents series. This is an exciting and unique opportunity for someone interested in pursuing a career in history. We are looking for a motivated, energetic, and skilled individual to join our team.
This is a full-time position starting in September 2019 and expected to last 12 months.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Duties will include research related to document analysis (textual and documentary intention, production, transmission, and reception) and contextual annotation of documents (identifications and explanations). Research will involve work in primary and secondary sources for early nineteenth-century America and early Latter-day Saint history. Work will include general assistance to volume editors.
The Research Historian will work under the direction of senior Historians/Writers.
QUALIFICATIONS
The ideal candidate will possess the following knowledge, skills, and abilities: Completion of Bachelor’s degree in history, religious studies, or other related field, preference will be given to those with master’s degrees and/or in doctoral programs in history, religious studies, or related discipline. Knowledge of and training in historical research Demonstration of excellent research and writing skills Ability to work in a scholarly and professional environment Strong organizational, time management, and verbal communication skills Organized, with an ability to prioritize time-sensitive assignments Creative and flexible Ability to work in a team, as well as independently Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite
Please attach a vita, a short writing sample demonstrating ability in using primary sources to form a cogent argument, and a list of three references to your application.
WORTHINESS QUALIFICATION Must be an endowed member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with a current temple recommend.
Deadline: 23 June 2019
To apply, go to careers.lds.org and search for Job Posting 236293
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”
Steven Borup on In Memoriam: James B.: “Bro Allen was the lead coordinator in 1980 for the BYU Washington, DC Seminar and added valuable insights into American history as we also toured…”
David G. on In Memoriam: James B.: “Jim was a legend who impacted so many through his scholarship and kind mentoring. He'll be missed.”
Recent Comments
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”
Steven Borup on In Memoriam: James B.: “Bro Allen was the lead coordinator in 1980 for the BYU Washington, DC Seminar and added valuable insights into American history as we also toured…”
David G. on In Memoriam: James B.: “Jim was a legend who impacted so many through his scholarship and kind mentoring. He'll be missed.”