History of LDS Youth Programs

The LDS Church recently announced that it will be severing its ties with the Boy Scouts of America and is creating a new program for all the children and youth in the Church. With this announcement, there have been discussions (here and here) about what these changes could mean for the youth programs in the Church, particularly for young women. Knowing the history of the LDS youth programs for the past one hundred years can help put all of these recent announcements in perspective.

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The Western History Association Graduate Student Prize: Applications due June 1

The Western History Association is pleased to accept applications for the WHA Graduate Student Prize. Inaugurated in 2014, the prize is designed to foster graduate student professional development and to enhance collegial citizenship within the organization. Up to ten students may receive the award. Each recipient will receive: a one-year WHA Membership, complimentary conference registration and tickets to the Welcoming Reception and Graduate Student Reception, and three nights of lodging in the conference hotel.

Prize Responsibilities: Prize winners must attend the WHA conference in the award year. The WHA Graduate Student Prize may be held concurrently with other WHA graduate student awards. WHA Graduate Student Prize winners are expected to be active in the organization through service on WHA committees and/or through participation in annual conference events and attendance at conference sessions. In addition, WHA Graduate Student Prize winners will act as co-hosts of the Graduate Student Reception each year.

More importantly, each WHA Graduate Student Prize winner must submit a two-page post-conference report to the WHA no later than December 31 of the award year. Details on report requirements will be included with the award letter.

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Religion and American Culture Articles Free for April 2018

UC Press is making its articles free for April 2018. Included in its journals is Religion and American Culture. Here is a list of articles in R&AC on Mormonism. Follow the links to download them through the end of the month.

James Bennett, “Until this Curse of Polygamy is Wiped Out”: Black Methodists, White Mormons, and Constructions of Racial Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century

Matthew Bowman, Sin, Spirituality, and Primitivism: The Theologies of the American Social Gospel, 1885?1917

Eric A. Eliason, Curious Gentiles and Representational Authority in the City of the Saints

Kathleen Flake, Ordering Antinomy: An Analysis of Early Mormonism’s Priestly Offices, Councils and Kinship

Kathleen Flake, Re-placing Memory: Latter-day Saint Use of Historical Monuments and Narrative in the Early Twentieth Century

Stephen J. Fleming, “Congenial to Almost Every Shade of Radicalism”: The Delaware Valley and the Success of Early Mormonism

Terryl L. Givens, Kathryn Lofton, Laurie Maffly-Kipp, and Patrick Q. Mason discussed Mormonism in this 2013 Forum.

Steven C. Harper, Infallible Proofs, Both Human and Divine: The Persuasiveness of Mormonism for Early Converts

Thomas W. Simpson, The Death of Mormon Separatism in American Universities, 1877?1896

Stephen Taysom, “Satan Mourns Naked upon the Earth”: Locating Mormon Possession and Exorcism Rituals in the American Religious Landscape, 1830-1977. This article pairs well with the podcast that Taysom did with the Maxwell Institute.

Beaver Dick, Johnny Garr, and Mixed Race Families in 19th-Century Utah Lecture by Dr. Amanda Hendrix Komoto

Join the Juvenile Instructor and the Mormon Women’s History Initiative this Thursday, March 15, for a lecture by Dr. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto.

Historians have written extensively about the Mormon adoption of Native children. In this talk, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto places these adoptions in the wider context of intimate relationships between Native Americans and white settlers. Fur traders like Richard Leigh (also known as Beaver Dick) become full-fledged characters who influenced Mormon communities. It also explores the lives of the Native women and children who were incorporated into white Mormon and non-Mormon families.

Thursday, March 15, 7 PM – 8:15 PM
Room 1150 of the Marriott Library, University of Utah