2020 has been an awful year on about seventy-five different fronts, but Mormon history and Mormon studies scholarship is not one of those sources of dismay. The field is growing, disciplinarily, in who writes the histories, and novel approaches to familiar topics.

While there’s no way to include every single publication, these are the articles I think best represent the state and future directions of the field. Articles are listed in alphabetical order, by the author’s last name.

Mormonism outside the United States

• William B. Allred, “Not Weary in Well-Doing: The Missionary Role of LDS Servicemen in Occupied Japan,” Journal of Mormon History 46 no. 3 (July 2020): 77-101.
• Russell W. Stevenson, “The Celestial City: ‘Mormonism’ and American Identity in Post-Independence Nigeria,” African Studies Review 63 no. 2 (June 2020): 304-330
• Brooke Kathleen Brassard, Proselytizing, Building, and Serving: Latter-day Saint Missionaries in Manitoba and Eastern Canada, 1897-1942,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses (November 2020): LINK.

Allred’s article on the Latter-day Saint serviceman’s legacy in Japan will be fascinating to those interested in missiology, Japanese Mormon history, and military history. Stevenson’s article is a prime example of how Mormon history scholarship outside the United States is becoming “glocal,” both global and local. I highly recommend the article.

Brook Kathleen Brassard’s article examines how Latter-day Saint missionaries and converts adapted to Canadian society in the late nineteenth century through the beginning of World War II. Anyone who enjoys Tweed’s Crossing and Dwelling as much as I do should read it ASAP.

Mormonism’s Sacred Texts and their Translations

• Michael Casper, “The Learning of the Jews and the Language of the Germans: Edward Isaacson in Utah and the Hebrew Book of Mormon,” American Jewish History 104, no. 1 (January 2020): 1-29.
• Robin Scott Jensen, “Contextualizing Revelations: Changing Attitudes towards Sacred Texts in the Church of Christ, 1829-1831,” Journal of Mormon History 46 no. 1 (January 2020): 26-52.
• Thomas A. Wayment, “Joseph Smith, Adam Clarke, and the Making of a Bible Revision,” Journal of Mormon History 46 no. 3 (July 2020): 1-22.

LOTS of excellent work on Mormonism’s sacred texts in 2020! Ignore the online discourse besmirching different author’s preferred methodologies—there’s a LOT to consume and consider regarding Latter-day Saint scripture.

Theories and Methods in Religious Studies

• Michael Hubbard MacKay, “Materializing Religion: Heideggger, and the Stability of Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones as Religious Objects,” Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief, 16, no. 3 (2020): 345-359.

I love this article and is the most interesting thing I’ve read on seer stones as material religion.

Archives and Historiography

• Matthew Bowman, “The Birth and Life of the New Mormon History,” Nova Religio 24, no. 1 (August 2020): 77-87.
• Keith A. Erekson, “A New Era of Research Access in the Church History Library,” Journal of Mormon History 46, no. 4 (October 2020): 117-129.

Bowman lays out the past of Mormon history and how it’s evolved since Fawn McKay Brodie’s No Man Knows My History (1946). Erekson provides an overview of how the LDS Church History Library operates and why some materials are inaccessible, the Library’s corporate nature, and optimism for the future.

Women’s History, Sexuality, and Gender

• Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, “The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century Utah,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 53, no. 1 (Spring 2020): 33-45.
• Emily January Peterson, “Women’s Lived Experience as Authority: Antenarratives and Interactional Power as Tools for Engagement,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 53, no. 1 (Spring 2020): 47-74.
• Brittany Romanello, “Multiculturalism as Resistance: Latina Migrants Navigate US Mormon Spaces,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 53, no. 1 (Spring 2020): 5-31.
• Ashley Anderson Webb and Jay H. Buckley, “Mormon Women Connected Suffrage Directly to Joseph Smith’s First Vision and the Restoration of the Gospel: Reflections from the 1920 Relief Society Magazine,” Journal of Mormon History 46, no. 4 (October 2020): 130-138.
• Topic: Women’s Suffrage, BYU Studies Quarterly 59, no. 3

I’ve long said that much of Mormon history is based in the histogriographical developments of the 1970s and 1980s. This is neither good nor bad. Something that is positive is that Hendrix-Komoto, Peterson, and Romanello are using fresh lenses and innovative sources bases to better understand Mormonism and its practitioners. Those looking for article or master’s thesis projects would do well to look at their projects and think about how they contribute to broader scholarly literatures.

The entire BYU Studies Quarterly issue on Mormon women and suffrage is worth your time. Seriously. Download it. Read it. Love it.

Interdisciplinary Studies

• John Durham Peters, “My ancestors welling in me”: Sound and Silence in the Salt Lake Tabernacle,” Sound Studies 6, no. 2 (2020): 114-129.
• Scott C. Esplin, “Dark Tourism: Healing at Historic Carthage Jail,” Journal of Mormon History 46 no. 1 (January 2020): 85-116.
• Rebekah Westrup, “Imagining of the Book of Mormon: A Comparison of Arnold Friberg’s and Minerva Teichert’s Book of Mormon Paintings,
  Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 29 (2020): 85-119.

Peters’ article on the Salt Lake City Tabernacle changed how I view Mormon and Latter-day Saint architectures, sacred space, and sound. Esplin’s work reveals the ways that history has real stakes beyond historiography. Westrup’s work blew my mind and made me wish Mormon history had more art history.

Mormon History as/and Theology

• Taylor G. Petrey, “Silence and Absence: Feminist Philosophical Implications of Mormonism’s Heavenly Mother,” Sophia 59 (2020): 57-68.
• Miranda Wilcox, “Sacralizing the Secular in Latter-day Saint Salvation Histories (1890-1930),” Journal of Mormon History 46 no. 3 (July 2020): 23-59.
• Topic: First Vision, BYU Studies Quarterly 59, no. 2

To say that Mormon history is Mormon theology is reductionist and discounts the brilliant theological scholarship historians and other scholars produce. Petrey’s article is a followup to his 2016 publication “Rethinking Mormonism’s Heavenly Mother” and shows the value of considering gender and sexuality in Mormon theology. Wilcox’s work asks schoalrs to consider the slippery boundaries and the uses of history in creating religious narratives from “secular” sources. Brilliant all around.

The BYU Studies issue, like the one on Mormon women and suffrage, is worth your time and attention. Lots of heavy hitters from those at the center of Mormon studies and American religious history reflecting on Joseph Smith’s First Vision.

Mormon History in American Politics and Race Histories

• Matthew L. Harris and Madison S. Harris, “The Last State to Honor MLK: Utah and the Quest for Racial Justice,” Utah Historical Quarterly 88, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 5-21.
• Jessica Marie Nelson, “Race, Latter-day Saint Doctrine, and Athletics at Utah State University, 1960-1961,” Utah Historical Quarterly 88, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 22-38.
• W. Paul Reeve, “Reconstruction, Religion, and the West: The Great Impeacher Meets the Mormons,” Journal of Mormon History 46 no. 2 (April 2020): 5-45.

Harris and Harris untangle the story of how Utah finally adopted Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, rather than “Human Rights Day,” in 1991. Nelson’s article is the smartest take on race, athletics, universities, and Mormon history that I’ve read in a very long time. Utah State University remains understudied as a site of Mormon tensions, discussions, and historical development. Reeve’s article, based upon his 2019 Mormon History Association Presidential Address, is required reading for anyone interesting in Mormonism and national politics.

Digital Projects

• Century of Black Mormons
• “Who We Lost”

Paul Reeve and his team at the Century of Black Mormons have published dozens of biographies of Black Latter-day Saints who joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints between 1830-1930. It’s an invaluable resource and if you have names that should be researched, please send Paul Reeve a note! Follow them on Facebook.

Ardis Parshall’s “Who We Lost” series at Keepapitchinin is the most soberingshcolarship I’ve read this year. In the midst of a pandemic claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, it’s been extremely meaningful to me to learn about the lives of those who died in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Parshall’s nose for finding information and photographs have produced a remarkable archive, as well as memorial, to the dead. Follow her work on Facebook. Read more than 2000 tributes HERE.