Postdoc at the University of Virginia

2018-2019 Postdoctoral Fellowship

We invite applications from those whose work bears on American religious history, thought or practice and, ideally, in relation to law and politics. Preference will be given to applicants with interest in marginal religious movements, especially Mormonism.

The University of Virginia?s Religious Studies Department invites applications for one full-time Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer for the 2018-2019 academic year. The anticipated start date is July 25, 2018. Applications are welcome from any whose work bears on American religious history, thought or practice. Preference will be given to those applicants with interest in marginal or newer religious movements, especially Mormonism. Preference will be given to applicants interested in adding Mormon Studies to their portfolio. Expertise in Mormonism is not required. Rather, the Fellowship is designed to provide training for persons who wish to add such expertise to an existing disciplinary specialty.

Duties include, but are not limited to, teaching three courses over the two-semester term of the fellowship. Specifically, the Fellow will teach two seminars in his or her discipline and on topics of his or her choice. In addition, the Fellow will team-teach, with the Richard Lyman Bushman Professor of Mormon Studies, an introductory survey on Mormonism in relation to American culture. Applicants should evidence experience in and commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching in a liberal arts framework, and be prepared to participate in both a large team-taught introductory-level class and smaller upper-level courses.

Additional duties include assistance with UVA?s Forum on Religion and American Democracy. The Forum sponsors interdisciplinary research and other academic and public activity on the ways American religion and democracy shape one another. It also includes study of how the evolving relationship between American religion and democracy have affected, and continue to affect, other nations.

Compensation for this appointment will be in the form of a competitive salary with full-time benefits and includes a $3,000 research fund. For full consideration apply by February 15, 2018; however, the position will remain open until filled.

Applicants for the fellowship must have attained their PhD by the appointment start date.

To apply, please complete a Candidate Profile online through Jobs@UVA (search on posting 0622269), and electronically attach the following: a cover letter, a current CV including the names and contact information for three references, and a statement describing, in no more than 300 words, your qualifications for and philosophy of teaching with attention to your disciplinary approach.

Questions regarding the position should be directed to Kathleen Flake, Richard Lyman Bushman Professor of Mormon Studies: kathleen.flake@virginia.edu.

Questions regarding the application process or Jobs@UVA should be directed to Mick Watson, Administrator, Department of Religious Studies: maw4fp@virginia.edu.

The University will perform background checks on all new faculty hires prior to making a final offer of employment.

The University of Virginia is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Women, minorities, veterans and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

MHA International Scholars Fund

The Mormon History Association (MHA) seeks to raise $5,000 to support scholars from outside the United States to travel to and participate in the Association’s annual conference in Boise, Idaho, on June 7-10, 2018.  If you love Mormon history, this is an excellent opportunity to support the diversification and internationalization of our community of scholars! LINK HERE

MHA is making a concerted effort to diversify its membership and include scholars and students from around the globe in order to help expand our understanding of Mormon history outside of the United States.  An annual fund of $5,000 will allow the association to subsidize the attendance and participation of scholars from Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Pacific Islands, and elsewhere, for whom the expense of traveling to the United States for an MHA conference is often prohibitive.  We need the perspectives and knowledge these scholars can contribute, and ask for your help in elevating their voices.

The Mormon History Association is the preeminent scholarly organization dedicated to the study and understanding of all aspects of the Mormon past.  As an independent, nondenominational, nonprofit organization, we welcome all who are interested in Mormon history.  MHA’s flagship event is our annual conference, scheduled to occur next on June 7-10, 2018, in Boise, Idaho.

Please join us in this initiative to bring a greater international presence to the MHA 2018 conference. Contributions of every level are welcome.  All donations are tax deductible.  Our goal is to raise $5,000 by January 22.

Thank you for your support of the Mormon History Association and our increasingly global community of scholars and members!

DONATE HERE

Guest Post: Introducing Foundational Texts of Mormonism (OUP, 2018)

The following is a guest post from friend-of-the-JI Mark Ashurst-McGee, the Senior Research and Review Historian at the Joseph Smith Papers and co-editor of several volumes in the series. He holds degrees in American History from Arizona State University, Utah State University, and Brigham Young University. Ashurst-McGee has authored award-winning graduate theses on Joseph Smith’s Zion project and the Mormon prophet’s use of seer stones and he is the author of several articles. He is the co-editor, along with Robin Scott Jensen and Sharalyn D. Howcroft, of Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources, forthcoming in February 2018 from Oxford University Press.

Early next year, Oxford University Press will publish a major new book on Joseph Smith and early Mormonism. If you are a scholar or an avid reader of early Mormon history, you will want to own and read this compilation.

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Highlights from Mormon Studies Review, Volume 5

The Mormon Studies Review is the best annual over view of the Mormon Studies (sub)field available anywhere. Produced by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, the journal is produced by a remarkable editorial team. You can subscribe for $10 (and you get the Maxwell Institute’s other publications, too!). I’ll highlight each contribution, and pull a sentence or two from each article to give a taste of the writing and rigor involved in each contribution. As much as the summaries, I hope that you’ll appreciate with me the myriad of approaches that could be used in Mormon History or Mormon Studies. The field, as they say, is white and ready to harvest.

First, a review panel comprised of Ann Little (a renowned women’s history specialist and microhistorian), Paul Reeve (the Simmons Professor of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah), and Sarah Carter (a historian of plural marriage outside of Mormonism) examines Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A House Full of Females.[i]  An excerpt from Little’s response sums up the book well:

Ulrich’s instinct to hew to the daily realities of mid-nineteenth-century missionary life and westward imperial expansion serves her well. The Mormons she portrays lead complicated lives, emotionally and sexually messy as well as frequently (literally) clogged with mud, dirt, and dysentery from their various removes and migrations. She focuses on the details of early Mormon life as they were revealed in diaries rather than retrospective memoirs, which brings the immediacy of their experimentation to life.

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New(!) Mormon Studies Website at the University of Virginia

This post comes from Meredith Nelson, the webmaster of the University of Virginia’s Mormon Studies website. We hope that you will find it useful!

Kathleen Flake and the Mormon Studies Program at the University of Virginia have recently launched a new website that highlights programming, events, faculty, courses in American religious history, Professor Flake’s research, and potential research topics.

In Doing Mormon Studies, we feature a large collection of video interviews conducted by Prof. Kathleen Flake with prominent scholars in 2016. James Faulconer, Terryl Givens, Matthew Grow, Kate Holbrook, Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Ann Taves, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Grant Wacker comment on potential research topics waiting to be picked up, on their favorite personal discoveries, on Joseph Smith, on their own academic paths, and on what aspiring scholars should keep in mind.

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Call for Applications ? 2018 Mormon Theology Seminar

The Fifth Annual Summer Seminar on Mormon Theology
?Are We Not All Beggars? Reading Mosiah 4?
Cittadella Ospitalità, Assisi, Italy
June 17?June 30, 2018

Sponsored by the Mormon Theology Seminar
in partnership with
The Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies,
The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship,
and the Wheatley Institution

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“The Heathen World and America’s Humanitarian Impulse”

I have recently become the director of the Rocky Mountain American Religion Seminar (RMARS) at the University of Utah. As director, one of my jobs is to invite scholars to deliver public lectures at the University of Utah. Our first lecture will be delivered by Professor Kathryn Gin Lum of Stanford University. Her lecture will be held on Monday, October 16 at 2 PM in CTIHB 101 (University of Utah).

She will speak on the confluence of race, religion, and the “heathen” in American history. You can RSVP (and help spread the word) on Facebook.

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“Science vs. Dogma: Biology Challenges the LDS Paradigm” by Greg Prince, Author & Historian

The Obert C. & Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center presents The 2017 Sterling M. McMurrin Lecture on Religion & Culture

“Science vs. Dogma: Biology Challenges the LDS Paradigm” by Greg Prince, Author & Historian

Wednesday, September 27 at 7:00 PM

Salt Lake City Public Library: Nancy Tessman Auditorium

210 East 400 South, Salt Lake City

Open to the public, no tickets required

Facebook event: https://goo.gl/4jXtP8

LIVE STREAM: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/h1ynw

Lecture Announcement from The Joseph Smith Papers

CFP: 2018 Regional AAR at BYU

AAR/SBL Rocky Mountain-Great Plains Region

Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah: March 16?17, 2018

Call for Papers

The Regional Program Committee invites proposals for papers and panels to be presented at the 2018 Regional Meeting in Provo, Utah. The deadline for submissions is Friday October 27 at 5:00 pm MST.

Proposals dealing with any aspect of the fields of religious studies, biblical studies, and Near Eastern studies are welcome. We seek proposals on all topics, religious traditions, historical periods, and biblical (including pseudepigraphical and deutero-canonical) texts and traditions. We welcome proposals for single papers, panels with multiple papers, or other types of sessions, such as roundtables involving structured discussions of pre-circulated questions. Proposals addressing issues such as pedagogy, instructional technology, philology, ritual, the body, religion and media, religion and politics, and current trends in the profession are also encouraged.

Proposal Requirements

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