What Language Does God Speak?: A Roundtable on the Politics of Language within Mormonism

A few days ago, Christopher Jones posted a link on the backchannel for Juvenile Instructor, linking to a post by a New Zealand Mormon.  The post explored the effects that correlation and the homogenization of the Mormon Church has had on Mormon communities outside of the United States.  The conversation that ensued that was so interesting that we decided to post an edited version here: 

Christopher Jones: Amanda, David, Max, others: thought you’d be interested in this. It’s written by a New Zealander, but touches on issues that relate to each of your respective research interests in some way or another. Really fascinating stuff.

Unlatching from the Amerimormon Cultural Teat

http://kiwimormon.com/2012/08/07/unlatching-from-the-amerimormon-cultural-teat/

Mormon Teen Lit: Susanna Morrill on Shirley Sealy’s “Beyond this Moment”

JI is currently doing a series on Mormon teen literature and what it tells us about the history of Mormon girls. So far, the series has looked Johnny Lingo and Jack Weyland and has considered ideas about the body. I am excited to present the next post in this series, in which Susanna Morrill, a professor at Lewis and Clark College, explores Shirley Sealy’s “Beyond This Moment.” Susanna received her PhD from the University of Chicago in Religious Studies and “White Roses on the Floor of Heaven: Mormon Women’s Popular Theology, 1880 – 1920.”

I?m a newcomer to modern Mormon romance literature, but am excited to expand my horizons a bit. I decided to read Shirley Sealy?s Beyond This Moment (Provo: Seventy?s Mission Bookstore, 1977).  Amanda began the series talking about what young adult books had taught her about her body. So, when I finished Sealy?s book, I asked myself the same question: What did the book want to teach a young Mormon woman in the 1970s about her body and, more broadly, her physical existence in the world? A lot, as it turned out!

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Mahana, You Naked: Johnny Lingo and the Politics of Nakedness

This is the first substantive post in a series about Mormon literature and the creation of a history of Mormon girls.  This post tries to think about Mormon literature expansively and thus, takes as its subject a film that has sometimes been referred to as the ?fourth Mormon gospel.?  Next week, Susanna Morrill gives us her take on Mormon teen romances.

I first watched Johnny Lingo at my cousin?s birthday party.  I remember more of the confetti cake and sprinkles than I do of the movie that night, but I enjoyed it enough that I insisted that Liz and I watch it one night after the Joseph Smith Summer Seminar.  We popped some popcorn, put in the DVD, and curled up in some blankets.  When the movie came on, the first thing I thought after a decade or longer absence was, ?Oh my gosh, I can see his nipples!?

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Max and Amanda discuss the Book of Mormon, Historicity, and Mormon Studies

After some discussion, Juvenile Instructor has decided to try a new type of post today.  Instead of having a single-author or making a single argument, this post is a conversation between two scholars about a topic.  It should add a different flair to JI and will hopefully spark some discussion.  In this case, Max and Amanda discuss the Book of Mormon and its place within Mormon history and scholarship as a whole.  Both Max and Amanda are non-members and thus, may (or may not) have a different perspective than historians writing from a believing perspective.

Max:  Hi Amanda. We’re trying something new today at JI: a conversational post.

Amanda: Hi Max, Glad to be a part of this.

Max:  To get started, there has been a great deal of discussion in the bloggernacle as of late about how to approach the Book of Mormon as a scholarly source. I’d argue that most scholars, especially non-members (like us), get hung up on the “historicity” of the Book of Mormon, or as many would argue, the lack thereof.  The inability of some scholars to move beyond ?historicity? is partly a result of the nature of the text itself.   From the Book of Mormon?s inception, there has been an insistence that the book is historical.

Wasted Seed and Spent Men: Corinne Allen Tuckerman and the Politics of Polygamy after 1890

I am at the Schlesinger Library this week doing research in the papers of Corinne Allen Tuckerman, a woman who lived with her husband in Salt Lake City during the turn-of-the-century.  A member of the first class to matriculate at Smith College, she was also the President of the National Congress of Mothers, a founder of the Parent and Teachers Association, and a fierce opponent of polygamy.  Tuckerman wrote letters to the presidents of seminaries and colleges asking them what their classes taught about marriage, gave lectures about the evils of polygamy, and helped to found Hallock Hall in Utah as a refuge for working class girls.  Because the publication of our first edition of the ?What I learned from Jack Weyland? series is going to be a bit postponed, I thought I would give you some snippets from her correspondence:

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What I Learned from Jack Weyland, or a New Series on the History of Mormon Girls

A few months ago, in a post called The Mormon Body Project, I asked what a history of Mormon women and their relationship to their bodies would be like.  How did Mormon garments with their emphasis upon modesty and purity change the way that women thought about their menstrual cycles, their breasts, and other intimate aspects of their bodies?  Did Mormon theology and its emphasis upon the divinity of the body allow Mormon women to develop more positive ideas about their body?  And, finally, how did Mormon institutions like Young Women?s and Relief Society help girls manage the transition from childhood to adolescence? 

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Marjorie Newton’s “Tiki and Temple” Review

Newton, Marjorie. Tiki and Temple: The Mormon Mission in New Zealand, 1854?1958. Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2012. Paperback. 343 pages. ISBN: 978-1-58958-1210. $ 29.95.

Note:  The term Pakeha refers to the white settler population of New Zealand, while the Maori are the islands’ indigenous peoples.

Tucked in the back of Marjorie Newton?s Tiki and Temple is a Maori glossary.  It is possible to read and understand her work without referring to it to discover that a mihi is a greeting or welcoming ceremony or that quarterly conferences were called hui pariha in the Mormon Church in New Zealand.  The glossary?s existence, however, is evidence of Newton?s commitment to writing a history of the Mormon Church in New Zealand that recognizes the contributions of indigenous Maori culture to the church and is meticulous in its detail.  Newton also carefully reconstructs the lives of early Pakeha converts to the church.  As I read Of Tiki and Temple, I was consistently impressed with her careful research and attention-to-detail.  Newton has written the most comprehensive history of the Mormon Church in New Zealand and her work should serve as an example on how to write an engaging local history.

Newton begins her book with William Phelps? description of the Maori people in The Evening and the Morning Star in which he rhapsodized

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Lysol and Mother’s Day

Mormon missionary history typically focuses on the histories of the white men who traveled from the gold fields of California to proselytize among the native Hawaiians or among Australians living in Perth and Melbourne.  Although these histories can be engaging forays into Mormonism, my research recently has focused on the men and women who lived in Laie in an attempt to avoid American anti-polygamy legislation.  Doing so has been a fascinating glimpse into the dynamics of the early Mormon community.  I have learned, for example, that Susa Young Gates loved a bit of salacious gossip, even though she often repented of it afterward.  The women of the mission responded bitterly towards her, writing in one case that that woman could ?talk? in spite of being told that no one on the mission cared to listen to that ?rubbish.?

What has been most fascinating, however, has been reading about their various pregnancies and labors. 

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Invitation: Ladies? Tea and Book Discussion Group at Mormon History Association

Today, I am going to be attending the Community of Scholars program, sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan.  Each year, the institute accepts a dozen or so students from across the university into a seminar to discuss the ways in which sexuality, gender, and race intersect in their work.  My friends and I sometimes refer to it as feminist boot camp.  The competition for acceptance into the seminar can be intense, especially for those students whose work is in fields that typically privilege gender as a category of analysis. A few months ago, Brittany Chapman and I were bemoaning the absence of a similar space for people interested in gender to discuss their work in Mormon Studies.  Although female historians like Claudia Bushman, Jill Mulvay Derr, and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher began the process of unearthing a woman?s Mormon history decades ago, relatively little has been published in the field.  Knowledge about the everyday lives of Mormon women ? the rituals surrounding childbirth, the difficulty in securing food and shelter during their husbands? absences as missionaries, the development of bonds between sister wives and children, the inspection of homes through Retrenchment Societies, and the ways in which they maintained contact with their families in the East, Great Britain, Scandinavia, and the Pacific ? remains fragmentary at best. 

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Women, the Priesthood, and Augusta Adams Cobb: Connell O’Donovan’s response to Jonathan Stapley

In the spirit of intellectual debate and friendship, we offered Connell the opportunity to read and respond to Jonathan’s letter before we published it at Juvenile Instructor.  Connell happily accepted the invitation.  What follows his response:

I deeply appreciate this opportunity to reflect further on Augusta Adams Cobb Young?s beliefs as stated in the two documents referred to, and their historical impact and importance. I highly value academic debate and am neither afraid to admit when I have erred in judgment, nor to agree to disagree with a colleague, as the case may be.

I want to begin with some background.  Some five years ago, I first became acquainted with Augusta through my lengthy research project on early Boston Mormons, now nearly 700 pages long (see connellodonovan.com/boston_mormons.html). She was among the first 10 converts to Mormonism in the Boston area in 1832 made by Orson Hyde and Joseph Smith?s younger brother, Samuel H. Smith.

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