From the Trenches: Religion as a Category of Analysis

I am taking a very laid-back readings seminar this summer at the UI revolving around the question of race and the city. I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when the discussion turned to questions relevant to those who frequent this blog. I thought I might offer a short narrative, in part to let those who have never had the “privilege” of a attending a graduate seminar know how random they can be, and also to present some questions raised in my mind as a result of the discussion.The topic for this particular session focused on the racial and class dynamics inherent in the conception and reality of the suburb. One of the books that we read by Dolores Hayden talked about recently planned communities like Seaside, Florida where the Truman Show was filmed. For those of you who didn’t know, the city where Truman lived actually exists as an idealized upper-class community by the ocean. The book also talks about Disney’s idyllic residential development in Florida named Celebration where people can live in sanitized bliss. As we spoke about the class and racial implications involved in the creation of such planned communities, my Professor mentioned the Florida town of Ave Maria of which I had never heard.

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How Wide the Divide? Historicity and the Priesthood Ban

(Before commenting on this post I would ask that you read the entire post. The point of this essay is to promote civil discussion and dialogue. Extreme polemics and ad hominem attacks are not helpful for any discussion. Be careful how you use and define labels. The following comments are offered in the spirit of understanding-I hope that our readers will participate in the same spirit. Please think before you write.)

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Cognitive Dissonance and Scholarly Pursuits

Much is said on the Bloggernacle about the cognitive dissonance that many feel as they try to reconcile the knowledge they acquire through scholarly treatments of Mormonism with what they hear in their church meetings every Sunday. In this post I would like to explore another form of cognitive dissonance that I find quite prevalent in my own quest to become a professional historian. I hope that you will permit me a moment of personal reflection about something that I think is relevant for those who produce and consume academic history.

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How Mormon was He?

I decided to take a little break from my weighty posts of the last few weeks and ask everyone if they find anything particularly Mormon in the following passage:

I am proud that I am an American citizen of Japanese ancestry, for my background makes me appreciate more fully the wonderful advantages of this nation. I believe in her institutions, ideals, and traditions; I glory in her heritage; I boast of her history; I trust in her future. She had granted me liberties and opportunities such as no individual enjoys in this world today. She had given me an education befitting kings. She has entrusted me with the responsibilities of the franchise. She has permitted me to build a home, to earn a livelihood, to worship, think, speak, and act as I please-as a free man equal to every other man.

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Is There a Method to the Madness?

I just wanted.to thank everyone for their comments to my last post about the place of theory in the study of history and its implications for the study of the Mormon past. This post will focus on historical methodology and its implications in the study of Mormon history. Questions about historical methodology and Mormonism are what inspired my recent rhapsodies on process of historical inquiry. I was skimming through Prince’s provocative biography of David O. McKay, which I liked very much in many ways, but I was appalled at the way he described his methodology.

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Theoretically Speaking about Mormon History

Before anything else, I want to wish everyone good luck or congratulations on their end of semester work–which ever option best fits your own situation. After having done my best to diagram the historical craft in my previous post and postulate what such observations might mean for the study of Mormon history, I have decided today to tackle the role of theory in historical inquiry. Once again, I am treating an extremely complex topic, but I hope to present my ideas in a clear and concise manner. As such, I will probably oversimplify some concepts for which I profoundly apologize-this topic has proven much more difficult than I initially thought.

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The Historians’ Craft: A Call for Understanding

I hope this isn’t a topic that has been discussed here before. I have been thinking lately about what it means to practice academic history. The recent post and comments about the new Emma Smith film, in correlation with my seemingly never-ending journey along the path of professionalization, have caused me to ask myself if the history undertaken by trained historians is any different than the study of the past by others. I hope that I am not constructing a straw man, but it seems that some people in the church have developed a sort of hostility toward those that focus their academic studies on Mormonism. My personal opinion about such hostilities is that they represent a reflection of how non-historians don’t really understand historians and their methods. This misunderstanding causes them to label such historians as threats.

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Mormonism in Their Own Words

I’m happy to be blogging for JI on a more permanent basis. I have always enjoyed being a token “model-minority” in Mormon country:)

I thought it might be interesting to post some the words of Japanese Americans used when dealing with Mormonism. Some of these quotations come from oral interviews and probably represent the Nikkei’s long-standing relationship with the the area’s dominant religion as well as their perceptions of history, while the other addresses how Japanese American ethnicity and Mormonism interacted historically. If you like this first set of sources, maybe I’ll do a post with more of them.

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Mike Masaoka and the Mormon Process of Americanization

I have been trying to figure out how to summarize some of my findings about the way that Mormon identity affected Japanese Americans in Utah and Idaho during World War II for this post, but I have been having some trouble extracting the Mormon aspect of the story from the greater argument while still maintaining nuance and a grasp of the larger picture. Thus, I have decided to focus in on Mike Masaoka as both an emblematic and exceptional example of the way that Mormon identity interacted with Japanese American identity in Utah. Most of the narrative I am going to present represents my reading of his somewhat presumptuously titled, They Call Me Moses Masaoka and much comes from a chapter entitled “Moses in Mormonland.” Because the process of autobiographical writing inherently involves the construction and reconstruction of memory, I mostly use this narrative as an example of how a prominent Mormon Nikkei wanted to frame his and others’ experiences with Mormons. [1]

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Mormonism: Part of a Greater Whole?

As I have been reading massive amounts of books on American History in preparation for my first PhD Comprehensive exam, I have started to ponder about the ways which historians have examined Mormonism as part of larger narrative in American History, Western History, the History of American Religion, or the History of Religion in general. I was reading through Battle Cry of Freedom the other day and was surprised to find that McPherson placed Joseph Smith and Mormonism into his narrative as part of the Western expansion that preceded the Civil War. His coverage isn’t extensive, but he does track the Mormons from New York to Ohio to Missouri and then to Salt Lake City. [1]

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