Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah: A Conference on 2 Nephi 26-27
By March 25, 2009
Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah
Wednesday 15 April 2009
BYU HBLL Auditorium (1st floor)
9 Jenny Webb ?Slumbering Voices: Death and Textuality in 2 Nephi?
By March 25, 2009
Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah
Wednesday 15 April 2009
BYU HBLL Auditorium (1st floor)
9 Jenny Webb ?Slumbering Voices: Death and Textuality in 2 Nephi?
By March 22, 2009
?The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.? ?John Keats
[This is not so much a scholarly post as it is a personal averment of one of my cherished aspects of Mormon thought. It may be too literature-heavy for many of JI?s readers, but that?s where my background is, and also a framework which I believe helps our understanding of the intellectual context of early Mormon thought.]
By March 16, 2009
Currently, a couple of seasoned Mormon scholars are working on a book collection of Mormon documents for Columbia University Press. This got me thinking: what would you say are “essential” documents in the LDS past?
By March 4, 2009
Since Ryan T. did so well, we decided to try another advanced-beyond-their-age undergraduate. JI is pleased to announce our newest guestblogger, Ardis S; this is how Ardis introduces herself:
Hi Juvenile Instructor! My name is Ardis Smith, and I am an undergraduate student in History graduating this April. Social history is my favorite category of history. I recently completed and successfully defended an Honors thesis on eighteenth-century English kinship, something that I studied at both BYU and Cambridge. I also have researched for the past year the civil rights movement as portrayed in the BYU student newspaper The Daily Universe during the 1950s and 1960s. When I am not studying history, I enjoy music, photography, Model United Nations, and playing games with family and friends.
On a personal note, Ardis and I were fellow students at BYU’s (now ceased) Semester at Nauvoo Program, and I can attest to both her intellectual brilliance and pleasant nature.
Please join us in welcoming Ardis.
By February 24, 2009
In case you haven?t noticed by the majority of my posts (excluding the recent series on Wilford Woodruff), I am mostly interested in intellectual history?that is, the history of human thought. When I study history, I want to know what people were thinking, how they formulated their ideas, and how they presented their mind. Perhaps I am just an Emersonian at heart, but I believe all actions begin with the mind. I can stay up all night reading the great works of great thinkers, whether it be John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing, Max Muller, or many others.[1] Beyond learning what happened in history, I want to know why and what thoughts led them to that action. I also hope to see the breaking down of the artificial boundaries between religious and cultural thought, a new direction finally coming to fruition in our generation.
By February 19, 2009
I am past deadline on several papers and should be working on homework due in the next hour, but I couldn’t help but put up a post and hopefully stimulate some discussion.
By February 16, 2009
This is continued from my other “Woodruff as Historian” posts.
According to Howard C. Searle, whose dissertation on Early Mormon Historiography is by far the best work on the subject, Wilford Woodruff?s work on the short biographies of the Quorum of the Twelve is one of his two most important contributions to 19th century Church history.[1]
While the writing of Joseph Smith?s history was coming to a close in 1856, attention was understandably turning to the next historical project. Logically, they decided to start working on the history of Brigham Young, though this involved going back in history and covering his birth through August 8, 1844, when the Twelve took leadership of the Church. Beyond a history of just Brigham, Wilford wanted a detailed history of the entire Young family. To Phineas Young, Brigham?s brother, Woodruff wrote,
By February 12, 2009
It seems every once and a while we get a development in Mormon Studies that is really groundbreaking; to me, this is one of those instances.
By February 6, 2009
(I am taking a break from Woodruff for a moment, and thought I would post something related to Unitarianism in honor of Ryan T’s guest-blogging.)
The quick success of early Mormonism came as a shock to many contemporaries. This left religious thinkers scrambling to find a way to account for this “heretical” movement’s growth, attempting to explain why so many people were finding the Mormon message so persuasive.
By January 30, 2009
Continued from a former post.
Wilford Woodruff was having a tough time in his new assignment as Assistant Church Historian. After his appointement at the 1856 April General Conference, he was anxious to get started and optimistic about his possibilities. The first couple months, however, ended up being more difficult than he had expected. First, he came down with a crippling disease that kept him away from the office for several weeks–in fact, he wrote that he couldn’t even leave his bed for quite some time. Finally, towards the end of May, he was able to put in his first full day’s work with his new duties, writing to George A. Smith (current Church Historian and on a mission in the East Coast), “I am now calculating to devote my time [to the history].”[1]
Prior to Woodruff’s call, George A. Smith, Thomas Bullock, and the others working in the Historian’s Office had worked on “compiling the History of Joseph Smith from April 1st 1840 to his death on June 27, 1844.”[2] In May 1856, the only thing left to be completed was the Prophet’s last day’s in Carthage. However, this turned out to be a lot more difficult than Woodruff had expected because of incomplete records. On June 24th, he noted in his journal that, “We find a great
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