The Williams P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art solicit papers that examine religion in the North American West. Selected participants will take part in a two-part symposium to workshop their papers leading to an edited volume. The symposium and resulting volume will examine the religious, spiritual, and secular histories of the Trans-Mississippi West, including western Canada, northern Mexico, and the trans-Pacific West such as Hawaii, the Philippines and American Samoa. The symposium will focus on the West(s) created by the contact of settler-colonists, migrants, and indigenous peoples from the 16th to 21st centuries. Paper topics should not merely be set in the North American West but should engage significantly with the region as a constitutive part of religious histories and experiences.
It did not take long after I started reading The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth for me to be completely hooked. Really, it was on page 6 in the Introduction. Barr told the story of what inspired her to write the book—her husband’s dismissal from his job as a youth pastor. Barr, a historian of medieval Christianity, had long recognized issues with the idea of Biblical womanhood as it was taught in her Southern Baptist faith, but she had stayed silent for a myriad of reasons. Finally, she could not stay silent anymore. Barr wrote, “By staying silent, I had become part of the problem. Instead of making a difference, I had become complicit in a system that used the name of Jesus to oppress and harm women.”[1]
For me, those sentences spoke to an internal wrestle I was already having. You see, I had been thinking a lot about Eliza R. Snow. Eliza is, I think, a fascinating case study for the negotiations of patriarchy within nineteenth-century Mormonism.[2] Snow was not what we would consider a feminist. She did not believe in equality between men and women. She upheld the authority of men in the church over women and she taught that wives should submit to their husbands. However, she had a powerful voice within the church and used her voice to help dismantle or counter some patriarchal teachings and encourage women to obtain educations, pursue careers, contribute to the economy, and other things that we might look back on and praise for their feminist underpinnings. Eliza made a real difference in the church. But at what cost? Eliza, it seems, had to uphold the authority and superiority of male power within the church to be given space for her voice to be heard. She was, to some degree, complicit in a system that oppressed women.[3]
I had been wondering if that was still true today. Do women in the LDS Church today still have to support patriarchal systems to have a voice? Is the possibility of having a powerful enough voice to enact real change worth the risk of complicity in an oppressive system? I still do not have answers to those questions. But Barr’s book inspired me to think more critically about ideas surrounding womanhood within Christianity.
The New-York Historical Society invites candidates with a humanities MA or PhD to apply for the position of Public Humanities Fellow in connection with the traveling exhibit Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West, which opens at the New-York Historical Society in New York City in November 2022. We are looking for candidates with significant expertise in 19th century religion, particularly as it relates to Native American religion and spirituality. Applicants must have graduated from a humanities MA or PhD program (including public history and museum studies) within the last five years, and have a desire to practice publicly engaged scholarship. This is a two-year, full-time position, with the anticipated dates of Sept. 2021 through Aug. 2023, and the possibility of remote work during the first year. The position comes with a National Endowment for the Humanities stipend of $50,000 per year plus benefits. Some travel may be required.Applications will be considered on a rolling basis until the position is filled. For more information and to apply for the fellowship, click here.
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
NativeTruth
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
MountainMusic
Hymnody and musical theater
FictionalMountains
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.
The Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia invites candidates to apply for a post-doctoral Research Associate position. The Research Associate conducts research and supports academic and public events related to the study of religion. Duties will include administrative tasks in support of research activities, the Forum on Democracy and Religion, the Virginia Center for the Study of Religion, and the Mormon Studies Program. The Research Associate will coordinate public events and academic meetings and provide communications and budgetary support. The position may also involve teaching academic courses and an opportunity to present research. This job is ideal for someone who thrives in a higher education environment, has an interest in the study of religion, especially but not limited to American religion and Mormonism. [ADDED LATER: POSITION BEGINS ON 8/24/2021]
The final few years of Joseph Smith’s life reveal a man with many responsibilities: religious, familial, and civic. The editors of Joseph Smith Papers, Documents: Volume 12: March-July 1843 (D12) make that abundantly clear in their outstanding volume and give researchers the tools they need to understand better the historical contexts of antebellum America and Latter-day Saint Nauvoo. However, I also felt like I came to know Joseph Smith the person from the 96 documents organized and annotated in D12. In their introduction, they quote Joseph Smith as saying, “when a man is reigned up continually by excitement, he becomes strong & gains power & knowledge.” Smith was never content to operate in one role alone; he saw himself within communities and as a society-builder. Zion, to Smith, was the “pure in heart,” but it was also comprised of people.
The Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is looking for a historic sites curator to serve as a digital operations specialist. As a standing member of the division’s visitor experience team, this individual will assist in extending the reach of historic sites significant in Church history for a global audience.
This is a full-time position.
RESPONSIBILITIES
In order of importance. Includes percentage of time spent on each.
It is time to jumpstart your research in Mormon women’s history with an MWHIT grant! Our organization is thrilled to offer two research grants annually to help one student and one independent scholar forward his or her study of Mormon women’s history. For example, these funds could be devoted to childcare to allow blocks of time for writing, travel for a research trip, acquiring digitized copies of records, editing assistance, and so forth. The work of women scholars and those interested in women’s history desperately needs to be shared, and that means YOU or someone you know! Forward this email to a friend who may also be interested. The deadline to apply for an MWHIT research grant is Saturday, May 1, 2021.
Click here for details on the Student Grant and here for details on the Independent Scholar grant.
In an effort to connect researchers to one another, feel free to respond to this email with your research interests and needs. We will see if we can provide you with contacts of persons who share your interests! Thank you to all who have supported our bazaars and other fundraising efforts to make these grants possible.
Steve Fleming on BH Roberts on Plato: “Interesting, Jack. But just to reiterate, I think JS saw the SUPPRESSION of Platonic ideas as creating the loss of truth and not the addition.…”
Jack on BH Roberts on Plato: “Thanks for your insights--you've really got me thinking.
I can't get away from the notion that the formation of the Great and Abominable church was an…”
Steve Fleming on BH Roberts on Plato: “In the intro to DC 76 in JS's 1838 history, JS said, "From sundry revelations which had been received, it was apparent that many important…”
Jack on BH Roberts on Plato: “"I’ve argued that God’s corporality isn’t that clear in the NT, so it seems to me that asserting that claims of God’s immateriality happened AFTER…”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”
Recent Comments
Steve Fleming on BH Roberts on Plato: “Interesting, Jack. But just to reiterate, I think JS saw the SUPPRESSION of Platonic ideas as creating the loss of truth and not the addition.…”
Jack on BH Roberts on Plato: “Thanks for your insights--you've really got me thinking. I can't get away from the notion that the formation of the Great and Abominable church was an…”
Steve Fleming on BH Roberts on Plato: “In the intro to DC 76 in JS's 1838 history, JS said, "From sundry revelations which had been received, it was apparent that many important…”
Jack on BH Roberts on Plato: “"I’ve argued that God’s corporality isn’t that clear in the NT, so it seems to me that asserting that claims of God’s immateriality happened AFTER…”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”