By Ben PDecember 6, 2010
I love year-in-review lists. Building on last year’s post, this is a retrospective of 2010’s scholarly output in Mormon studies. I hope to add to the excellent posts by Jared (forthcoming) and J Stapley by listing not only books, but articles that also deserve attention. (As noted recently, historians should really reconsider our “journal standard,” and place more importance on scholarship other than monographs.) I also like this format because it allows reflections on general trends within Mormon studies and historiography in general.
I am bound to overlook some books and articles that others feel are significant. This is not on purpose–it is more a result of being 1) lazy 2) limited in my personal interests, or 3) ignorant of work while being stranded across the Atlantic Ocean. I hope people will mention and discuss the texts I overlook in the comments. There could also be another post dedicated to the excellent historical posts found in the bloggernacle over the last year–but that would be beyond the scopes of this retrospect.
[Note: Some of these works have a publication date of 2009. I include these for one of two reasons. 1) They were published after I posted last year’s retrospective (the perils of posting at the beginning of December). 2) Though they have a 2009 publication date, they actually didn’t appear until 2010.]
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By Ben PNovember 9, 2010
[Note: The following is a book review forthcoming in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. I appreciate Kristine Haglund and Russell Fox for allowing me to reproduce it here.]
Aird, Polly. Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector: A Scottish Immigrant in the American West, 1848-1861. (Norman, Okl.: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2009). 320 pp. Illustrations, photos, maps, footnotes, bibliography, index. Cloth: $39.95, ISBN 978-0-87062-369-1.
Just as national histories are always written by the victors, religious narratives are often written by those who remain within the fold. The common tropes of conversion, devotion, dedication through trials, and faithfulness until death dominate Mormon historiography. What are missing are those whose stories diverge from the traditional storylines. In Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector: A Scottish Immigrant in the American West, 1848-1861, Polly Aird provides us with an account of someone whose narrative significantly differed from the norm. Peter McAuslan embraced the Mormon faith in his native Scotland, made the arduous trek to Utah to live with the body of Saints, grew disillusioned with the faith he once loved, and then decided to leave the Church, flee Deseret, and establish a new life once more in California. While stories like McAuslan?s are often quickly forgotten, they are crucial to enriching our understanding of the historical period, offering a-traditional views in order to complete our portrait of the past.
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By ChristopherOctober 22, 2010
Stephen C. Taysom. Shakers, Mormons, and Religious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested Boundaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. xvi + 263 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95. Cloth.
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By Steve FlemingOctober 15, 2010
Eamon Duffy sets up his monumental Stripping of the Altars as a challenge to three books: A. G. Dickens The English Reformation, Jean Delumeau Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire and Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Duffy xx). Duffy?s critique of Dickens is related to what I describe in this post (Dickens described the English Reformation as a popular movement while Duffy said it was not; most scholars agree with Duffy now) and the critiques of Delumeau are described in my write up on the Dechristianization of Europe.
Duffy?s critique of Thomas is more complex, however.
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By Steve FlemingOctober 7, 2010
Randall Styers. Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Naomi Janowitz. Magic in the Roman World: Pagans, Jews and Christians. London: Routledge, 2001.
Syters begins his book with a quote from Bruno Latour: “Do not trust those who analyze magic. They are usually magicians in search of revenge.” The Pasteurization of France, (Harvard 1988), 212. I’m not sure what that then says about Styers or myself, but fun to think about nonetheless.
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By Steve FlemingSeptember 3, 2010
My vote for best historical work ever is Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic. I first read chunks of the book as an undergrad and have used it as a reference up till now, all the while becoming more convinced that it was worthy of this title. Recently I made sure to get the whole thing read and am now more convinced than ever and wanted to put a post.
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By Steve FlemingJuly 4, 2010
Bever, Edward. The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cognition, and Everyday Life. Houndsmill, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. 2008.
I read this book recently at the recommendation of my adviser, Ann Taves, because she is now focused on the cognitive science aspect of religion. This book is an attempt by Bever, a historian by training, to apply some of the cognitive science methods to the study of early modern witchcraft. This review is a little long but I thought it suggested a number of interesting approaches for the study of supernatural beliefs in a historical setting.
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By Ben PJune 23, 2010
To get a better understanding of the cultural milieu of early Mormonism, one might need to make an extra trip to Yale?s Beinecke Library. And read French.
Damrosch, Leo. Tocqueville?s Discovery of America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. xxi + 227 pp. Illustrations, maps, endnotes, index. Hardback: $27.00; ISBN 978-0-374-27817-5.
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By Steve FlemingJune 15, 2010
Jon Butler argued in Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People that colonial Americans were not really “Christianized” until late in the eighteenth century. In making his argument, Butler was essentially applying the “dechristianization” thesis to colonial America (he mentions Mormons in a later chapter). To shed light on these arguments, I wanted to summarize the debates over the dechristianization thesis.
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By ChristopherJune 4, 2010
I’m making my way through Jeffrey Williams’s Religion and Violence in Early American Methodism: Taking the Kingdom by Force (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), an admittedly revisionist challenge to the current scholarship on early Methodism that highlights the rhetorical violence in the sermons, conversion narratives, and personal writings of Wesley’s disciples in the early American republic. I may consider posting a brief review of the book (and noting any potential avenues for research in Mormon studies it may suggest) when I complete it, but for the time being, I want to focus in on one line from the book’s foreword, authored by Catherine Albanese and Stephen Stein, editors of the Religion in North America series of which this book is a part.
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