2022 MHA CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS

By June 14, 2021

Theme: Landscape, Art and Religion: The Intermountain West and the World

For its 57th Annual Conference in Logan, Utah, the Mormon History Association has joined forces with the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts to create a program that we hope will bring an art element into the sessions. We have selected a theme which we believe will evoke provocative historical papers and also suggest art topics, meaning all the arts: literature, visual art, music, film, theater, architecture, design, and so forth.

The theme, “Landscape, Art, and Religion: The Intermountain West and the World,” grows out of the assumption that the natural environment shapes culture and society. Social organization, the economy, and artistic expression are formed and directed by the landscapes in which they rest. During the first century of Mormon settlement, the intermountain landscape influenced many aspects of human life In the twentieth century, the Intermountain West remained the heartland of Latter-day Saint culture, but church members had to adapt to other landscapes, cultural and physical, as Mormonism expanded around the globe.

The program committee invites scholars young and old, local and global, to investigate all aspects of this theme. Because of the collaboration with the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, we hope many will take the occasion to explore artistic dimensions of society and culture. How are the riches and the tensions of Mormonism’s natural settings manifest in literature, music, the visual arts, film, and all the other art disciplines?

As a spur to thought, here are possible session topics that stem from the theme:

The meaning of valley in Mormon culture

  • From Promised Valley to Great Basin Kingdom

Picturing the West

  • Painters’ Impressionist West
    • Photography of the Intermountain region
    • The desert as metaphor

The Two Dixies

  • Comparative slaveries in Utah and the American South

Pacific Mormonism

  • Lifestyle, climate, art, and religion in the islands and Australia

Native Truth

  • Indigenous and settler economies
    • Desert and mountain landscapes in Native American religions
    • Navajo poetry

Gathering as Gain and Loss

  • Homesick immigrants

Mountains as Image, Resource, and Obstacle

  • Mining, logging, grazing
    • Experimental migration routes
    • Landscapes as religious art

The Female Economy in a Desert Landscape

  • Experiments and everyday realities

Mountain Mormons and Plains Mormons

  • Did environment matter?

Ecological Impacts

  • Mormon town planning

Reflections on Classic Intermountain Texts

  • Great Basin Kingdom, Promised Valley, Giant Joshua, Educated, On Zion’s Mount,
    • Refuge

Borderland Religion

  • Mormon settlements in Arizona and Mexico

Diaspora

  • Establishing Mormonism in other social and natural ecologies

Cosmopolitan Religion

  • Culture shock for outbound Mormons

Mountain Music

  • Hymnody and musical theater

Fictional Mountains

  • The place of landscape in recent Mormon novels

Of course, as always, sessions on all aspects of Mormon history are welcomed. We hope to attract the best current scholarship. Though individual papers will be given full consideration, proposals for complete sessions, whose participants reflect MHA’s ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusion, are most likely to be accepted.

Please submit (1) a 300-word abstract for each paper or presentation and (2) a one-page CV for each presenter, including email and cell phone contact information Full session proposals should include the session title and a 150-word abstract outlining the session’s theme, along with a confirmed chair and commentator or moderator, as applicable. Individuals may only be included as presenters in one proposal per conference. Previously published papers are not eligible for presentation at MHA. Limited financial assistance for travel and lodging at the conference is available to student presenters and some international presenters. Proposals from international presenters or others who cannot attend the meeting in person will be considered for the online version of the conference.  All presenters—including poster session presenters and online presenters—must be MHA members and registered for the conference format (in-person or online) in which they present.

The deadline for proposals is November 15, 2021. Send proposals to the program co-chairs at logan2022@mormonhistoryassociation.org as a single PDF. Acknowledgment of receipt will be sent immediately. Notification of acceptance/rejection will be made by January 15, 2022.

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