By SC TaysomNovember 5, 2012
The Mormon Reformation is a period in LDS History that has long been of interest to scholars working in the field. Paul Peterson, Leonard Arrington, Thomas Alexander, D. Michael Quinn, Will Bagley, Paul Peterson, and others have all written about the reformation and have grappled with its cause(s) and meaning(s). In the interest of full disclosure, a chapter from my recent book Shakers, Mormons and Religious Worlds (Indiana University Press 2011) also addresses the subject of the Mormon reformation. John Turner takes a turn as well in his new biography of Brigham Young. Turner’s material on the reformation represents a fine synthesis of some of the most recent work on the subject, and as such it has value beyond the descriptive function.
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By SC TaysomOctober 25, 2012
I am currently in the early stages of a scholarly biography of Joseph F. Smith. Biographies are sort of strange beasts, largely because they seem deceptively simple. A person lives and then a biographer writes about that life. The reality of course is much more complex. The biographer has to make a great many choices before doing any research at all. Biographers have to decide what sorts of questions they want to answer using the life of their subject. Are the questions just about the subject? Or will the subject be used to demonstrate larger themes? Something in between? What about organization? Thematic? Chronological? As I wade through these and similar questions, I would like to tap the collective wisdom of JI’s readership. As readers, what kind of biographies do you prefer? What are your favorite biographies? What are your least favorites?
By SC TaysomAugust 30, 2011
From The Archives:
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By SC TaysomFebruary 24, 2011
I have been doing research in the Wilford Woodruff journals for a piece on Woodruff’s use of memory. Today I found an unusual entry from May 1887. On the 26th, Woodruff, along with Francis M. Lyman and John Henry Smith, were in the St. George Temple and decided to weigh and measure each other.
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By SC TaysomJune 26, 2010
HBO’s popular Big Love series and David Ebershoff’s bestselling novel The 19th Wife stand as evidence that polygamy remains a perennial topic of interest for Mormons and non-Mormons alike. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that scholarly presses with heavily-Mormon themed catalogues continue to publish serious work on the subject. Utah State University Press’s excellent Life Writings of Frontier Women series has once again offered a sterling piece of documentary history with the publication of Post Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899-1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff, edited by Lu Ann Taylor Snyder and Phillip A. Snyder.
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By SC TaysomOctober 25, 2009
I read lots of Reformation sermons for my forthcoming book, but I had no way to use this extract from Heber C. Kimball’s 9 November 1856 address. I found it so wonderfully strange that I felt compelled to share it.
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By SC TaysomAugust 14, 2009
In my spare moments this summer, I returned to Pratt’s Autobiography just to see what would strike me. Probably because of my continuing work on Mormon theodicy, my interest in the changing Mormon conceptions of evil and the accompanying shift in apotropaic ritual, I was most interested in several passages dealing with Pratt’s view of evil in the world.
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By SC TaysomMarch 27, 2009
The following comes from a meeting of a “Special Council” held in Salt Lake on 21 March 1858. It is evidence, among other things, of Brigham Young’s contrarian streak. I’m sure it raised eyebrows 150 years ago, although probably not as many as it would raise today:
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By SC TaysomOctober 9, 2008
Occasionally we like to provide our readers who may not have the time or inclination to read widely in the scholarly literature of American history or other disciplines with a sampling of what scholars are saying about Mormonism. Today John Demos is in the spotlight.
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By SC TaysomJuly 11, 2008
David O. McKay performed his first exorcism when he was 25. It was, he wrote in his journal, a day “long to be remembered.”
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