By April 15, 2015
Call for Papers for the Annual Conference of The Communal Studies Association
October 6?8, 2016
Salt Lake City, Utah
Anticipating the End Times:
Millennialism, Apocalypticism, and Utopianism in Intentional Communities
By January 29, 2015
Posting Info:
Posting Dates: 01/29/2015 – 02/27/2015
Job Family: Library, Research & Preservation
Department: Church History Department
Purposes
The Church History Department seeks a full-time Writer/Editor who will be responsible for the research, writing, and editing of products associated with historic sites significant to the history of the Church.
By January 12, 2015
Joseph Smith Papers Project Internship
Purposes:
The Church History Department announces an opening for a one-year internship with the Joseph Smith Papers Project. This will be a part-time (28 hours a week) temporary position beginning in March 2015.
Responsibilities:
Duties will include research related to document analysis (textual and documentary intention, production, transmission, and reception) and to contextual annotation of documents (identifications and explanations). Research will involve work in primary and secondary sources for early nineteenth-century America and early Mormonism. Work will include general assistance to volume editors.
Qualifications:
? Bachelor?s degree in history, religious studies, or related discipline, with preference given to those with master?s degrees and/or in doctoral programs.
? Possess excellent research and writing skills.
? Ability to work in a scholarly and professional environment.
? Requires both personal initiative and collaborative competence.
By November 12, 2014
Although recent scholarship has done much to understand Native conversions to Christianity in early America, asking intriguing questions about indigenous agency and adaptation within colonial contexts, little has been written on Native converts to Mormonism. Part of the hesitance, at least for nineteenth-century historians, stems from the nature of the source material. There are, simply put, few ?Native texts??written accounts drafted by indigenous converts to Mormonism that reflect their viewpoint?prior to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[1] From the 1850s through the 1880s, thousands of Native peoples accepted Mormon baptism in the inter-mountain American West and the Pacific Islands. Few if any of these converts could read Roman script, meaning their experience with Mormonism was largely oral in nature. They heard about rather than read the Book of Mormon and Mormon beliefs about the Lamanite ancestors of indigenous peoples. The corollary to this point is that few if any Mormon Natives could record in writing their own interpretations of church teachings, meaning historians are left with accounts of Native words that have been filtered through white interpreters and scribes. That said, some indigenous converts such as the Ute Arapeen, although unable to read or write English himself, used ingenious techniques to turn writing to his own purposes as he navigated the world around him that was rapidly being transformed by Mormon settlement.
By October 30, 2014
Historian/Documentary Editor, Joseph Smith Papers
Job Description: The Joseph Smith Papers seeks a full-time historian/documentary editor with the academic training, research, and writing skills to edit Joseph Smith?s papers. The Joseph Smith Papers is producing a comprehensive edition of Smith?s documents featuring complete and accurate transcripts with both textual and contextual annotation. The scope of the project includes Smith?s correspondence, revelations, journals, historical writings, sermons, legal papers, and other documents. Besides providing the most comprehensive record of early Latter-day Saint history they will also provide insight into the broader religious landscape of the early American republic.
By August 12, 2014
The latest issue of the Journal of Mormon History arrived in subscribers’ mailboxes recently. Here’s a brief rundown of the articles:
By February 9, 2014
Another week, another edition of the Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup!
There were significant new developments at church headquarters. First, it has been reported that the church’s Seminaries and Institutes department was revising its curriculum, in part to incorporate insights from the Joseph Smith Papers Project and the revamped Gospel Topics page on lds.org. The first installment in this revised curriculum was released this week, with an updated Church History and Doctrine and Covenants manual. The folks at FAIR Mormon are pleased with the results. Second, the Young Women organization announced a new board that will include substantial representation from women outside the United States. The Relief Society and Primary organizations are expected to form similar boards to better meet the needs of the international church. Additionally, training sessions for these organizations, which have traditionally been held only in Salt Lake City, will be made available via the internet. The Research Information Division at church headquarters is looking for a full-time researcher with graduate training in the social sciences.
By February 7, 2014
In late 1853, Brigham Young sent missionaries among the Paiutes in what is now southern Utah. The Southern Indian Mission, as it came to be known, resulted from a combination of factors, including Mormon beliefs in the Israelite origins of indigenous peoples and Young’s Indian policies in the wake of the Walker War of 1853-1854. Many Paiutes, including some prominent chiefs, found the missionaries’ message appealing, with hundreds of baptisms occurring over the next decade. The Paiutes embraced Mormonism for a variety of reasons. During the previous generation, the Paiutes’ Ute relatives had relied on horses and guns to raid non-equestrian Paiute bands, kidnapping women and children and selling them to New Mexican and Mormon buyers.[1] Seeing the Mormons as potential allies against the Utes, Paiute bands accepted the missionaries into their communities and expressed interest in learning new agricultural techniques and wearing Euro-American style clothing.[2] Additionally, many Paiutes who chose to affiliate with the church found the new religion compatible with their traditional religious views. By June 1854, one missionary reported that Paiute proselytes “prefer being called Pahute Mormons to Pahutes.”[3]
By January 14, 2014
The latest Journal of Mormon History has been reaching subscribers’ mailboxes this week, which means it’s time for the JI’s semi-regular brief reviews of the issue.
Ronald W. Walker, joined by Matthew J. Grow, completes his two part analysis of the 1851-1852 “Runaways” incident in “The People Are ‘Hogaffed or Humbugged’: The 1851-52 National Reaction to Utah’s ‘Runaway’ Officers, Part 2,’ 1-52. The first installment, which appeared in the last issue of JMH, chronicled the origins of the crisis with the first non-Mormon federal appointees in Utah Territory. This second part continues the story as the scene shifts to the nation’s capital, and follows the public affairs and behind-the-scenes activities of Jedediah Grant, John M. Berhisel, and Thomas L. Kane. Walker and Grow not only tell a gripping tale, but also demonstrate the importance of this event in the long and tortured history of Mormon-federal relations from the late 1840s through the 1890s. Unlike the similar struggle with federal appointees in the lead-up to the Utah War, the 1852 even actually turned out in the Mormons’ favor. The article provides a teaser for Walker and Grow’s forthcoming documentary volume on Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane’s correspondence.
By December 31, 2013
Todd M. Compton. A Frontier Life: Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2013. 642 pp. Illustrations, photos, maps, bibliography, index. Cloth: $44.95; ISBN: 978-1-60781-234-0
Todd Compton?s first major contribution to Mormon history was his 1997 In Sacred Loneliness, a collective biography of Joseph Smith?s plural wives.[1] In his most recent offering, Compton has returned to the biographer?s craft, with a definitive examination of Jacob Hamblin, a prominent figure in the Mormon colonization of southern Utah and the Southwest. Hamblin was a devout Latter-day Saint, who preached the Gospel to Indians, married plural wives, and played a key role in the expanding Kingdom of God in the West. Even in his lifetime, Hamblin achieved renown not only among the Saints as the ?Apostle to the Lamanites,? but also nationally as a guide and an interpreter for John Wesley Powell?s famed expeditions to the Grand Canyon. Previous Hamblin biographies have been either fictionalized or hagiographic, reflecting the ?Hamblin legend? that emerged in the nineteenth century.[2] More recent works, reacting against these earlier portrayals, have cast Hamblin in a more unfavorable light.[3] Compton?s biography, the first full-length scholarly treatment of Hamblin?s life, presents a positive reevaluation, while not ignoring the frontiersman?s flaws. Compton expertly analyzes Hamblin?s evolving attitudes toward Indians, showing how the missionary gradually became the ?Apostle to the Lamanites.?
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