The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church History Library has established a process to digitize, describe, and provide online access to as many of its holdings as possible. Using metadata from paper and electronic indices, spreadsheets, and other files, we are attempting to identify people, places and events in the over twelve million pages of digitized published materials and archival collections. The Library is seeking a part-time (28 hrs/wk) intern to help transform and create this metadata, and to train volunteers involved in the digital asset identification process. We invite students or recent (within last 12 months) college graduates with career goals in the field of metadata and/or digital asset management to apply for this 1-year, paid internship.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Learn how to use the Church History Library’s metadata enrichment tools.
Train volunteers how to use the Library’s metadata enrichment tools.
Assign and review volunteer metadata enrichment work.
Reconcile and resolve problems or exceptions encountered in this process.
Create and enhance training documentation for metadata projects.
Consult on improving metadata enrichment tools and processes.
Normalize and transform existing metadata in spreadsheets and other electronic documents.
Participate with other library, archival, and product management professionals in improving library services.
Improve professional skills relating to library, archives, and digital asset management.
Thanks to the Joseph Smith Papers Project for sharing this event! You can sign up for the JSPP newsletterHERE.
Date: September 26, 2019 Time: 7:00 p.m. Location: Assembly Hall (50 West South Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah)
The Church History Department invites you to attend a special lecture entitled “Joseph Smith, The Leader.” The lecture will explore the leadership positions that Joseph Smith held in Nauvoo in 1842. The presenters, Elizabeth A. Kuehn and Alex D. Smith, will draw on examples and insights from the latest volume of The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Volume 9, and the forthcoming Documents, Volume 10, which will be published in spring 2020.
Joseph Smith’s leadership was a central factor in developing the Latter-day Saint community of Nauvoo, Illinois. In 1842, Smith took on new civic, ecclesiastical, and financial responsibilities in addition to those he already held. These roles ranged from becoming the city’s mayor and judge over the local courts to editing the Church’s newspaper the Times and Seasons and helping to establish the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo. The lecture will highlight these responsibilities, their significance, and how Joseph Smith’s involvement provides insights into his character and leadership style.
Here are a few highlights from the Mormon History Association’s newsletter, which you you should receive with your MHA membership.
NEW JMH EDITORS: Christopher James Blythe and Jessie L. Embry have been appointed as co-editors of the Journal of Mormon History. From the newsletter, ” As co-editors, Jessie and Chris are committed to improving the scholarly profile of the JMH. While the journal will continue to be comprised of traditional historical articles, they will expand the journal’s vision to include articles on the Mormon past from a wider range of methodologies and perspectives. They look forward to special issues devoted to a particular theme and genre, as well as new sections of the journal devoted to the analysis of historical documents, visual and material culture, and field notes. They invite and seek contributions from both seasoned and emerging scholars, including those of underrepresented groups. Do not be surprised if you hear from them in the coming months! The next four years promise great things for the JMH.”
NEW BOARD MEMBERS: “During the business luncheon, MHA members elected five new board members, including Jenny Lund as President-Elect, Sara Patterson as Liaison Chair, David Simmons as Financial Chair, and Charlotte Hansen Terry as Student Representative. One of the most exciting changes announced was the addition of a Global Outreach Chair to the MHA board. Vinna Chintaram was elected to fill this important new role. We look forward to exciting things to come from this new position.”
FUNDRAISING FOR A JAN SHIPPS AWARD: MHA is thrilled to announce that we are raising funds to endow an article award in honor of Jan Shipps. A decades-long member of MHA and the first woman to serve as MHA President, Shipps is known to many in the organization as a friend and mentor. A pioneer of academic Mormon history, over many years her articles pushed the field in new and important directions. We feel it worthwhile to prominently feature her name when recognizing our best scholarship. An endowed award in her name will assure that MHA continues to promote and highlight the finest academic work on a yearly basis. We are pleased to report that $2,600 was raised when we announced the award at the 2019 MHA conference, and thank those who so generously donated. Please help us reach the endowment goal of $10,000. Donations may be made through MHA’s website or by mailing a check to MHA, P.O. Box 980398, Park City, Utah 84098 (write “Jan Shipps Article Award” on the memo line). For more information, or to assist in fundraising efforts for the endowment, please contact MHA Executive Director Barbara Jones Brown at barbara@mormonhistoryassociation.org.
MHA submissions are due on November 1, 2019! If you’re looking for co-panelists, feel free to use this Google doc, where you can list what you’re interested in, how many panelists you need, and any other information you’d like to include. We hope that this will be used in conjunction with Women in Mormon Studies and Global Mormon Studies. If you have other organizations whose membership might be helpful for forming panels, comment on this post and I’ll add it!
Anne Berryhill and I are also happy to put folks in touch with one another and to speak about proposed panels. Our emails are available in the CFP.
We are pleased to share details from the Third Annual Book of Mormon Studies Conference. If you’re in or near Utah State University you should consider going!
Friday, October 11
Plenary Session: Book Reviews 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Details forthcoming
Concurrent Sessions 10:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Room 1
Elizabeth Fenton (University of Vermont), “Readymade Books and the Preservation of the Sacred in the Book of Mormon and the Early Church”
Joseph M. Spencer (Brigham Young University), “‘Virgins, Harlots, Brides, and Queens: Women in the Prophetic Texts of First Nephi”
Kimberly M. Berkey (Loyola University), “‘Here Is My Daughter a Maiden’: Daughters in Judges and the Book of Mormon”
The Church History Department announces an opening for a historian/writer with an emphasis on the global history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Duties will include researching and writing, in collaboration with others, histories of the global Church for both scholarly and member audiences.
This is
the first post in a roundtable on Quincy D. Newell’s Your
Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century
Black Mormon (Oxford University Press,
2019). Look for more posts in the coming week!
Quincy Newell’s biography of Jane Manning James is a concise, informative study of one of the best-known Latter-day Saints of African descent. It is not the first study, nor the last, to examine Jane’s life and faith.[i] Born a free woman in Connecticut and buried a free woman in Salt Lake City, Jane James’ experiences are a crucial part of any study of Mormonism and people of African descent. Newell notes in the introduction that Jane’s life is “comparatively well-documented…she left multiple accounts narrating her personal history, some of which were published during her lifetime, and she appears in many other sources, including other people’s diaries, meeting minutes, and church and government records” (1). Despite the presence of these sources, many parts of Jane’s life remain mysterious to historians.
For all the words left behind by Jane, or about Jane, two words
repeatedly used by Newell stick out to me.
The 55th Annual Conference of the Mormon
History Association will be held June 4-7, 2020, in Rochester/Palmyra, New
York. The 2020 conference theme, “Visions, Restoration, and Movements”
commemorates the 200th anniversary of Mormonism’s birth in upstate
New York. Joseph Smith’s religious movement has grown from a fledgling frontier
faith to a diverse set of religious and cultural traditions functioning across
the globe. Members of Mormonism’s many branches are found among people of
different colors, languages, and nationalities. Consequently, Mormonism shapes
and has shaped the lives of millions of adherents and their neighbors from its
founding to the present.
People from all
of Mormonism’s branches have proven visionary in building their congregations
across the globe, in humanitarian efforts to relieve suffering and rebuild
communities, in political activism, caring for the environment, and other
actions which sometimes push back against accepted traditions, policies and
structures. Transformational activism
was a key feature of Mormonism from the beginning, born as it was in a
landscape of peoples and movements who changed the world around them–
constructing the Erie Canal, “burning” with religious fervor in the
Second Great Awakening, nurturing abolitionists and the fight for Black
liberation, and producing the struggle for women’s rights and suffrage.
On Memorial Day in 2019, 50-60 people gathered to participate in a monument dedication for Hark Lay Wales, a formerly enslaved African American man buried in Utah’s Union Cemetery. Wales, pronounced either like “whales” or “Wallace,” depending upon the person you speak to, lived and died in Utah Territory. He was enslaved by the William Lay family who converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mississippi. Wales entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 with the first company of Latter-day Saints.
There is no definitive, published proof that he was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though sources have told Juvenile Instructor that information will be forthcoming on centuryofblackmormons.org which suggest Hark may have identified as a Latter-day Saint at some point in his life. For a full overview of Hark’s life, please consult this piece by Amy Tanner Thiriot on Keepapitchinin.
The program preceding the dedication was remarkable for several reasons. First, it was presided over, guided by, and featured nearly all Black speakers, both Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint. Many of Utah’s and the LDS Church’s best and brightest spoke or sang at the event, including Robert and Alice Faulkner Burch, Marlin Lynch III, Tekulve Jackson-Vann, Salt Lake City Fire Chief Jeff Thomas, Yahosh Bonner, Utah State Representative Sandra Hollins, David Hollins, Andra Johnson, Nate Byrd, & Byron Williams, and the lone white speaker, Sheri Orton. Robert Burch dedicated the grave through prayer and Melodie Jackson, Garrett Whiting, and Sierra Rose unveiled the headstone.
Congratulations to all of the winners! JI-ers are in bold.
Individual Awards
Leonard J. Arrington Award: Kathleen Flake
Special Citation: Larry H. Miller, Gail Miller, and Kim Wilson
Book Awards
Best Book: Jonathan A. Stapley, The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Best Book Honorable Mentions: Colleen McDannell, Sister Saints: Mormon Women since the End of Polygamy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); James Swensen, In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2018).
Best Biography: Daniel P. Stone, William Bickerton: Forgotten Latter Day Prophet (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2018).
Best International Book: James A. Toronto, Eric R. Dursteler, and Michael W. Homer, Mormons in the Piazza: History of the Latter-day Saints in Italy (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2018).
Best International Book Honorable Mention: Julie K. Allen, Danish but Not Lutheran: The Impact of Mormonism on Danish Cultural Identity 1850-1920 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2018).
Best Person History/Memoir: Vella Neil Evans, My Father’s People: Journeys Across a Landscape of Hope (Self-Published)
Article Awards
Best Article: Matthew McBride. “’Female Brethren’: Gender Dynamics in a Newly Integrated Missionary Force, 1898-1915.” Journal of Mormon History 44, no. 4 (October 2018): 40-67.
Best Article on Mormon Women’s History: Kathryn H. Shirts. “The Role of Susa Young Gates and Leah Dunford Widtsoe in the Historical Development of the Priesthood-Motherhood Model.” Journal of Mormon History 44, no. 2 (April 2018): 104-139.
Best Article on International Mormonism: Erik J. Freeman, “’True Christianity’: The Flowering and Fading of Mormonism and Romantic Socialism in Nineteenth-Century France.” Journal of Mormon History 44, no. 2 (April 2018): 75-103.
Article Award of Excellence: Joseph R. Stuart. “’A More Powerful Effect upon the Body’: Early Mormonism’s Theory of Racial Redemption and American Religious Theories of Race.”Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 87, no. 3 (September 2018): 768-796.
JMH Article Award: William G. Hartley, “Brethren, It’s the Last Day of the Month’: A History of Ward Teaching, 1912-1963,” 44/4.
Student Awards
Best Dissertation Award: Megan Ann Stanton, “All in the Family: Ecclesiastical Authority and Family Theology in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Best Unpublished Graduate Student Paper: David Dmitri Hurlbut, “Unmasking a Peculiar People: The Entry of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints into Mission in Southeastern Nigeria, 1962-1966” (Boston University)
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