By Hannah JungApril 16, 2018
We are happy to relay the great news that Barbara Jones Brown (a past contributor to the Juvenile Instructor) has been hired as the new executive director for the Mormon History Association. We wish you all the best and look forward to the energy you will bring to the job!
Here is the message written by Mormon History Association President Patrick Mason:
It is with great pleasure that I announce that the MHA Board of Directors has hired Barbara Jones Brown as the association’s next Executive Director. Barbara is well-known to our association as a former member of the board and a longtime champion and supporter of MHA. Most recently she has worked as the Historical Director of Better Days 2020, a non-profit dedicated to elevating and commemorating the history of the suffrage and women’s rights movement in Utah. In addition to her nonprofit leadership experience, she also has extensive professional experience as an editor, researcher, and writer. An active historian with an M.A. in American History from the University of Utah, she was the content editor of Massacre at Mountain Meadows. She is co-author with Richard E. Turley Jr. on the book’s sequel, detailing the aftermath of the Mountain Meadows Massacre which, through a happy coincidence of timing, she will be speaking about as one of the plenary speakers in our upcoming annual conference.
The board of directors is enthusiastic about working with Barbara to fulfill our shared vision of an expanded MHA that serves an increasingly large and diverse set of members and constituencies. As the oldest and premier organization dedicated to the scholarly study of the Mormon past, MHA is poised to establish an even stronger profile in both the historical community and broader public. Barbara represents both a commitment to the legacy of MHA and a vision of how to take the association to the next level of excellence and impact.
Barbara’s term will begin on May 1, 2018, and she will work alongside our outgoing Executive Director Rob Racker through the June conference. There will be additional opportunities over the next two months to thank Rob for his service to MHA, but for now it suffices to say that we all owe him a debt of gratitude for his leadership the past three years. He helped navigate the association through some challenging times, and MHA’s current forecast for success rests in no small part on the foundation of financial sustainability that he has worked so hard to build.
I am grateful to the search committee and board of directors for their many hours of volunteer labor committed to conducting this successful search. I am truly excited to see what the future holds for this association we all love under the forward-facing leadership of Barbara Jones Brown. Thank you for your continued support of MHA, and I look forward to seeing you all in Boise!
By C TerryApril 9, 2018
UC Press is making its articles free for April 2018. Included in its journals is Religion and American Culture. Here is a list of articles in R&AC on Mormonism. Follow the links to download them through the end of the month.
James Bennett, “Until this Curse of Polygamy is Wiped Out”: Black Methodists, White Mormons, and Constructions of Racial Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century
Matthew Bowman, Sin, Spirituality, and Primitivism: The Theologies of the American Social Gospel, 1885?1917
Eric A. Eliason, Curious Gentiles and Representational Authority in the City of the Saints
Kathleen Flake, Ordering Antinomy: An Analysis of Early Mormonism’s Priestly Offices, Councils and Kinship
Kathleen Flake, Re-placing Memory: Latter-day Saint Use of Historical Monuments and Narrative in the Early Twentieth Century
Stephen J. Fleming, “Congenial to Almost Every Shade of Radicalism”: The Delaware Valley and the Success of Early Mormonism
Terryl L. Givens, Kathryn Lofton, Laurie Maffly-Kipp, and Patrick Q. Mason discussed Mormonism in this 2013 Forum.
Steven C. Harper, Infallible Proofs, Both Human and Divine: The Persuasiveness of Mormonism for Early Converts
Thomas W. Simpson, The Death of Mormon Separatism in American Universities, 1877?1896
Stephen Taysom, “Satan Mourns Naked upon the Earth”: Locating Mormon Possession and Exorcism Rituals in the American Religious Landscape, 1830-1977. This article pairs well with the podcast that Taysom did with the Maxwell Institute.
By GuestApril 2, 2018
Shí éí Bilagáanaa nishli dóó Kinyaa?áanii báshíshchíín. Bilagáanaa dashicheii dóó Tsinaajinii dashinálí. Ákót?éego asdzáá nishli. I am white and born for the Towering House Clan. My maternal grandfather was white and my paternal grandfather was of the Black-streaked Woods People Clan. In this way, I am a woman.
My name is Farina King. I am Assistant Professor of History and an affiliate of the Cherokee and Indigenous Studies Department at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
I am primarily writing to spread the news about an upcoming event, related to questions about monuments and the ongoing issues concerning Bears Ears, that I have been helping to organize with the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at BYU.
The Redd Center will host a special panel at BYU on April 5 at 7 pm in the B092 JFSB on campus, which features diverse Native American voices and perspectives of Bears Ears from San Juan County, Utah.
Continue Reading
By David G.March 28, 2018
Thanks to benchmarkbooks.com for the image!
Research Assistant, Joseph Smith Papers (Church History Department)
PURPOSES
The Church History Department announces an opening for a Research Assistant with the Joseph Smith Papers project. The successful candidate will assist the Joseph Smith Papers in the Publications Division of the Church History Department with historical and textual research for volumes in the Papers? Documents series. This is an exciting and unique opportunity for someone interested in pursuing a career in history. We are looking for a motivated, energetic, and skilled individual to join our team.
This is a full-time position expected to last for the duration of the Joseph Smith Papers Project (set to conclude in 2022).
Continue Reading
By David G.March 23, 2018
The proposed line-up, although there will likely be a couple more volumes in the Documents Series.
Historian/Documentary Editor, Joseph Smith Papers
Job Description: The Joseph Smith Papers seeks a full-time historian/documentary editor with the academic training, research, and writing skills to edit Joseph Smith?s papers. This position will last for the duration of the Joseph Smith Papers Project (set to end in 2022). The Joseph Smith Papers is producing a comprehensive edition of Smith?s documents featuring complete and accurate transcripts with both textual and contextual annotation. The scope of the project includes Smith?s correspondence, revelations, journals, historical writings, sermons, legal papers, and other documents. Besides providing the most comprehensive record of early Latter-day Saint history they will also provide insight into the broader religious landscape of the early American republic.
Continue Reading
By C TerryMarch 11, 2018
Join the Juvenile Instructor and the Mormon Women’s History Initiative this Thursday, March 15, for a lecture by Dr. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto.
Historians have written extensively about the Mormon adoption of Native children. In this talk, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto places these adoptions in the wider context of intimate relationships between Native Americans and white settlers. Fur traders like Richard Leigh (also known as Beaver Dick) become full-fledged characters who influenced Mormon communities. It also explores the lives of the Native women and children who were incorporated into white Mormon and non-Mormon families.
Thursday, March 15, 7 PM – 8:15 PM
Room 1150 of the Marriott Library, University of Utah
By J StuartMarch 2, 2018
BOOK OF MORMON STUDIES: A CONFERENCE
CALL FOR PAPERS
DATE: October 12-13, 2018
LOCATION: Utah State University
SUBMISSION DATE: May 15, 2018
The Book of Mormon Studies Association is happy to announce a conference to be held October 12-13, 2018, at Utah State University. Sponsored by USU’s Department of Religious Studies and with thanks to Philip Barlow, the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon Studies, the conference aims to gather scholars invested in serious academic study of the Book of Mormon, providing them with a venue to present their work and receive feedback and criticism. As with last year’s inaugural conference at USU, this conference has no centralizing theme. Instead, we invite papers on any subject related to the Book of Mormon from any viable academic angle. Pursuant to decisions made at last year’s conference, there will an official event organizing the Book of Mormon Studies Association itself during the conference, along with elections of officers.
Continue Reading
By J StuartFebruary 12, 2018
By David G.February 6, 2018
The 2018 Church History Symposium will be held 1-2 March 2018, splitting days between BYU campus and the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. The program committee has assembled a full slate of panels addressing the theme for this year’s conference, “Financing Faith: The Intersection of Business and Religion.”
Continue Reading
By J StuartFebruary 5, 2018
See original post HERE
Position: Executive Director, Mormon History Association
This person oversees and administers all aspects of the organization, reporting to the MHA President and Board of Directors.
About MHA:
The Mormon History Association is a nonprofit, independent, nondenominational organization dedicated to the scholarly study and understanding of all aspects of Mormon history, broadly defined. We promote this mission through scholarly research, conferences, awards, and publications.
Qualifications:
Proven record of experience in administrative work, preferably in the nonprofit field, with demonstrated competence in the following areas: accounting/bookkeeping and records management; public relations and communications; fundraising, donor relations, and capital development; event planning and coordination. Must demonstrate excellent interpersonal skills, and ability to be innovative and creative in generating new ideas and responding to external demands. Proficiency in newsletter publishing software, electronic communications, and records management is required; web design and social media expertise strongly preferred. The position requires personal flexibility, energy, diplomacy, and the ability to work independently.
The MHA Executive Director need not be a scholar of Mormon history, but should be able to enthusiastically support and publicly represent the organization’s mission, as well as interacting with the MHA membership which includes both professional historians and enthusiasts from a variety of religious backgrounds (or none at all).
Continue Reading
Newer Posts |
Older Posts
Recent Comments
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. …”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”
Steven Borup on In Memoriam: James B.: “Bro Allen was the lead coordinator in 1980 for the BYU Washington, DC Seminar and added valuable insights into American history as we also toured…”
David G. on In Memoriam: James B.: “Jim was a legend who impacted so many through his scholarship and kind mentoring. He'll be missed.”