Job Post: Women’s History Research Assistant, LDS Church History Department

Announcing a really great temporary, part-time research assistant position at the LDS Church History Department:

PURPOSES

The Church History Department is seeking an individual with a background in historical research and interest in working on an exciting project relating to Mormon women’s history. The person in this position will work closely with nineteenth century LDS records and be a member of a collaborative team. This is a contract position, anticipated to last up to 12 months. The position is a part-time (approximately 28 hours per week) hourly, nonexempt position.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Duties will include collecting, scanning, and transcribing women’s writings, and contributing to a database. The majority of the time will involve research in nineteenth-century minute books and newspapers. May require transcription verification and general research assistance to Historians/Writers. The work will include preparing texts for both online and print publication.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree in history, family history, religious studies, or related discipline. Possess excellent research and writing skills
• Ability to read nineteenth century handwriting
• Requires both personal initiative and collaborative competence

Position closes 30 July 2018.

To learn more or apply, click here.  

I will go forward. I will smile at the rage of the tempest, and ride fearlessly and triumphantly across the boisterous ocean of circumstance… and the ‘testimony of Jesus’ will light up a lamp that will guide my vision through the portals of immortality. Eliza R. Snow

New Authors at the JI

We are pleased to announce that we have added several new authors to our ranks! Please join us in welcoming them as perma-bloggers and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates!

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Jobs at the Church History Library!

Research Assistant for the Women’s History Team

Job ID: 211892.

Posting Dates: 06/29/2018 – 07/13/2018

Job Description:
The Church History Department is seeking an individual with background and interest in historical research. This role will work closely with various decades of LDS Church history.
This is a full-time temporary position, anticipated to last up to 12 months. Candidates must be currently enrolled in school and/or graduated within the last 12 months.

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JI Summer Book Club: Jared Farmer’s On Zion’s Mount

Back by popular demand, the Juvenile Instructor will be hosting its Fourth Annual Summer Book Club in 2018! This year’s book is Jared Farmer’s On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Harvard UP, 2008).[1] The selection of Farmer’s book continues our ongoing emphasis on biography. The first two years, we read and discussed Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling and then Newell and Avery’s Mormon Enigma, biographies of Mormonism’s founding couple. Last year, we read Ulrich’s A House Full of Females, a group biography of several women (and a few men) of the movement’s first generation. On Zion’s Mount is perhaps best understood as the biography of a place—Mount Timpanogos—and how it became such a prominent landmark in Utah.

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MWHIT Women’s History Scholarships

The Mormon Women’s History Initiative Team is proud to announce two scholarships dedicated to the study of Mormon women’s history, one for independent scholars, and one for students at an accredited institution. Applications are due 30 June 2018

MWHIT promotes research and networking in the field of Mormon Women’s History. They hold public events to promote new publications and projects and host a women’s history breakfast at the annual Mormon History Association Conference. Check out their website and join their Facebook groups: Mormon Women’s History Initiative and I Love Mormon Women’s History.

Black, White, and Mormon II Conference

Black, White, and Mormon II:

A Conference on Race in the LDS Church Since the 1978 Revelation

• June 29-30, 2018
• Salt Lake City Library, Nancy Tessman Auditorium

On 8 June 1978, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced Spencer W. Kimball’s revelation extending the lay priesthood to “all worthy male members… without regard for race or color.” To mark this event and analyze the Mormon Church’s ongoing efforts to achieve racial equality, the Tanner Humanities Center will host a multidisciplinary conference in collaboration with the College of Humanities’ Simmons Mormon Studies Professor Paul Reeve. This follows their 2015 conference on Mormonism and race that received national and international press coverage.

This conference will include scholarly and community panels to examine themes and issues about how the LDS Church sustains an ever-increasing multiracial and multicultural membership and the impact of doctrinal change at the grassroots.

Speakers include Darius Gray, Alice Burch, Ahmad Corbitt, Wain Myers, and LeShawn Williams, among many others, with a cultural celebration with Marj Desuis.

This conference is sponsored by the Charles Redd Center, BYU; LDS Church History Department; Gregory Prince; Smith-Petit Foundation; W. Paul Reeve, Simmons Professor of Mormon Studies, University of Utah; Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah, and Jon and Philip Lear.

More information and a complete schedule can be found here.https://thc.utah.edu/lectures-programs/mormon-studies-initiative/black-white-mormon.php

MHA Awards 2018

Congratulations to all of the winners! JI-ers are in bold.

Individual Awards

Arrington: Gary James Bergera

Special Citation: Cherry Bushman Silver

Book Awards

Best Book: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 (Knopf, 2017).

Best Biography: Carol Cornwall Madsen, Emmeline B. Wells: An Intimate History (University of Utah Press, 2017).

Best First Book: Brent M. Rogers, Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory (University of Nebraska Press, 2017).

Honorable Mention: Mary Campbell, Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image (University of Chicago Press, 2016).

Best Documentary Editing: Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrook, and Matthew J. Grow, eds., The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History (Church Historian’s Press, 2016).

Article Awards

Best Article: Amy Harris, “Early Mormonism’s Expansive Families and the Browett Women,” in Rachel Cope et al., eds., Mormon Women’s History: Beyond Biography (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017): 83-112.

Women’s History: Andrea G. Radke-Moss, “Silent Memories of Missouri: Mormon Women and Men and Sexual Assault in Group Memory and Religious Identity,” in Rachel Cope et al., eds., Mormon Women’s History: Beyond Biography (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017): 49-81.

International: Lamond Tullis, “Tzotzil-Speaking Mormon Maya in Chiapas, Mexico,” Journal of Mormon History 43, no. 2 (2017): 189-217.

Excellence: Jeffrey David Mahas, “‘I Intend to Get Up a Whistling School’: The Nauvoo Whistling and Whittling Movement, American Vigilante Tradition, and Mormon Theocratic Thought,” Journal of Mormon History 43, no. 4 (2017): 37-67.

JMH Award: Tonya Reiter, “Black Saviors on Mount Zion: Proxy Baptisms and Latter-day Saints of African Descent,” Journal of Mormon History 43, no. 4 (2017): 100-123.

Student Awards

Dissertation: Taunalyn Ford Rutherford, “Conceptualizing Global Religions: An Investigation of Mormonism in India,” Claremont Graduate University.

Thesis: Jessica Nelson, “The ‘Mississippi of the West’: Religion, Conservatism, and Racial Politics in Utah, 1960-1978,” Utah State University.

Graduate Paper: Matt Lund, “Missionary Widows: The Economic and Social Impact of Mormon Missions on Families,” University of Utah.

JSP Jobs: Editorial Assistant and Source Checker

Editorial Assistant: Church Historian’s Press (Church History Department) (Contract Position) 

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Job Post: LDS Church History Department Records Manager

The LDS Church History Department has opened a full-time position as a Records Manager in the Library, Research, and Preservation Division.

The job entails working with LDS Church departments and offices to collect and preserve institutional records, and involves maintaining a records management policy, training department records managers, and managing and tracking records.

The application requires either an MA with 5 years of experience or a BA with 7 years of experience in history, library science, archival studies, business, public or non-profit admin, or related fields. All applicants must be members of the LDS Church and temple worthy.

https://careers.lds.org/search/public/jobdetail.aspx?jobid=207497

The Western History Association Graduate Student Prize: Applications due June 1

The Western History Association is pleased to accept applications for the WHA Graduate Student Prize. Inaugurated in 2014, the prize is designed to foster graduate student professional development and to enhance collegial citizenship within the organization. Up to ten students may receive the award. Each recipient will receive: a one-year WHA Membership, complimentary conference registration and tickets to the Welcoming Reception and Graduate Student Reception, and three nights of lodging in the conference hotel.

Prize Responsibilities: Prize winners must attend the WHA conference in the award year. The WHA Graduate Student Prize may be held concurrently with other WHA graduate student awards. WHA Graduate Student Prize winners are expected to be active in the organization through service on WHA committees and/or through participation in annual conference events and attendance at conference sessions. In addition, WHA Graduate Student Prize winners will act as co-hosts of the Graduate Student Reception each year.

More importantly, each WHA Graduate Student Prize winner must submit a two-page post-conference report to the WHA no later than December 31 of the award year. Details on report requirements will be included with the award letter.

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