Graduate Research Fellowship in Mormon Studies at the University of Utah (DUE MARCH 2, 2020)

The Mormon Studies Initiative at the University of Utah is pleased to announce a call for applications for the Graduate Research Fellowship in Mormon Studies at the Tanner Humanities Center for the 2020-2021 academic year. Applications are due 2 March 2020. Application material can be found at this link: https://history.utah.edu/undergraduate/mormon-studies-fellowship.php#uu-top-target

The first of its kind in the nation, the Tanner Humanities Center’s Mormon Studies fellowship provides a doctoral student funds to spend a year researching the history, beliefs, and culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members, or any religious group that traces its roots to Joseph Smith Jr. This fellowship is open to all dissertation level students of the Mormon Experience from any university in the United States or from around the world. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to: Theology, History, Sociology, Economics, Literature, Philosophy, and Political Science.

The historiography of adoptive sealing practice

In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith revealed a new temple liturgy and cosmology that incorporated the idea of sealing people together into a durable and eternal network of heaven. There were a lot of loose ends in the practical reality of sealing practice when he was killed. The Quorum of the Twelve instituted the practice of “adoption” (also sometimes referred to as the “law of adoption”)—sealing men and women to people other than their biological parents—when the temple opened for use by the Saints. This practice endured until 1894, when the church president Wilford Woodruff received a revelation mostly ending the practice. [n1]

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Digital News: The Woman’s Exponent Project

Hello JI readers! Please join us in welcoming The Woman’s Exponent Project, a digital history exhibit from Digital Matters at the University of Utah and the Office of Digital Humanities and Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University. We at JI are excited to see the project come to fruition.

The Woman’s Exponent Project is a collaborative digital humanities and public history project between the University of Utah and BYU that explores the content of the Woman’s Exponent (1872-1914) that captures the fascinating, complex, and even contradictory history of suffrage in Utah. The Woman’s Exponent Project aligns with a unique moment in time, as Utahns prepare to celebrate the 150th anniversary of a Utah woman casting the first female ballot in the nation in 1870, a full 50 years before the 19th Amendment guaranteed universal women’s suffrage in America.

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Mormon Studies’ Growth in the Past Ten Years: Institution Building

I didn’t know what Mormon Studies was in December 2009. Sure, I had just taken a course on American Christianity at BYU, but it hadn’t caused me to think much about the academic study of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or any of the other branches that connect to Joseph Smith’s religious ideas. Now, a decade later, it strikes me that the field has risen considerably in the eyes of the academy and in the estimation of non-academic Latter-day Saints.

I believe the strength of Mormon Studies publications and the venues in which they appear is one of the most important developments of the past ten years. We’ve passed the point where a press will take on a Mormon Studies project just for book sales. Books on Mormonism are now published regularly by university press catalogues, and not just traditional Mormon Studies powerhouses like the University of Illinois Press, the University of Utah Press, or the University of North Carolina Press, but with Harvard University Press, Liveright/Norton, Oxford University Press, University of Nebraska Press, and the University of Chicago Press.

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