Dear Lord, Why Did I Go to Graduate School? Surviving Coursework

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog entry about graduate school and the feelings of inadequacy that I was having.  I promised a blog series on surviving graduate school.  After much thought I?ve decided to do it chronologically, which means ironically that this series starts with the section that I had the least amount of trouble with: coursework.  Coursework was bliss for me ? I love being around people and don?t have issues working on a deadline, so the sociality and structure were fantastic.  It?s the dissertation process, which is more solitary and less guided, that I struggle with.  Please add any suggestions or advice you have in the comments below.

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Southwestern States Mission: Dyeing Clothes

I wish you all a thoughtful and thankful Veterans Day. After a three-month break, I?m restarting the “Southwestern States Mission series” (homepage). A few months ago clothes dyeing came up in the Jones diary at Keepapitchinin:

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Guest Post: Patrick Mason, “Why Romney’s Loss is Good for Mormon Studies”

[We are pleased to host this contribution from JI’s good friend Patrick Mason, Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Mason holds a PhD in history from Notre Dame University, and his first book, The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (Oxford UP, 2011), has received great praise. His work can be found, well, everywhere nowadays, and is currently working on (at least) two projects: a volume, co-edited with David Pulsipher, on a distinctive Mormon theology of ethics and peace, as well as a biography of Ezra Taft Benson, which will explore the rise of both Mormonism and the Religious Right. For Part II of his commentary, this time on the ramifications of Romney’s loss on Mormonism in general, see his post at Peculiar People.]

The Mormon Moment was good for Mormon Studies.  It raised the profile of Mormonism in universities, media outlets, churches, and living room conversations across the country.  The fact that a devout Latter-day Saint was a serious contender for the White House made his religion a serious topic of conversation, even for people who find the religion?s faith claims anything but serious.  Like it or not, academics, journalists, and public intellectuals learned, Mormonism is a force to be reckoned with.

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Romney Lost. Is the Mormon Moment Over? And What Would That Mean, Anyway?

Mitt Romney hoped to be the Mormon JFK. Instead, he will now go down in the history books as the Mormons? Al Smith ? the Roman Catholic who was nominated for the presidency by the Democratic Party in 1928, but lost to Calvin Coolidge in part because of anti-Catholic prejudice.

But I?m not interested in how long it will be before we elect our first Mormon president. I?m more interested in the so-called ?Mormon Moment,? and what the end of Mitt Romney?s political career means for the place of Mormons in American culture. With Romney (and his ubiquitous political ads) out of the spotlight, will the Latter-day Saints now fade from the national stage? Will Americans forget about their odd Mormon neighbors and move on to lambasting and lampooning someone else?

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The Mormon Reformation in Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet

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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Lecture Report: Janet Bennion and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich on “The Faces of Eve: Varieties of Mormon Feminism”

On Thursday, October 25, Janet Bennion, Professor of Anthropology at Lyndon State College in Vermont, delivered a lecture, ?The Faces of Eve: Varieties of Mormon Feminism,? at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University. Professor Bennion is an expert on the contemporary practice of polygamy among Mormon fundamentalists, and the author of several books on the subject. Bennion?s lecture focused on her most recent book, Polygamy in Primetime: Media, Gender, and Politics in Mormon Fundamentalism, which she presented as a synthesis of her more than twenty years of research among polygamous groups in North America. Her goal, she said, was to produce a readable work that would educate the general public about these groups, as well as better preparing law enforcement officials to deal with them?and thus to avoid another event like the ill-managed 2008 raid on the FLDS Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas.

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Mormon Teen Lit: Jacqueline Antonovich on Temple Marriage, Feminism, and Non-Traditional Marriage in Tamra Norton’s “Molly Mormon?”

Jacqueline is a PhD student at the University of Michigan, where she studies gender, medicine, and politics during the Progressive Era.  She also earned an MA from the University of Wyoming and a BA from Mesa State College where she graduated summa cum laude.  I am happy to have her contribute to this series.  Since she arrived at Michigan, she has demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the American West and a commitment to feminist politics.  She is also a ton of fun.  Both of these characteristics are on show at her group blog Nursing Clio.

Note: You will find Molly Mormon published by both Tamra Torero and Tamra Norton.  They are one and the same.  Tamra Torero is the married name of the author.

Like many young, gawky preteens growing up in the 1980s, I had a very intimate relationship with teen literature. Because I didn?t exactly have an open line of communication with my parents, I often sought out these books to help answer my most pressing teenage-angsty questions. Of course, my favorite author was Judy Blume.  I still look back fondly at my trips to the local library, searching longingly for any dog-eared copy of a Blume book I might have missed. Some of her novels ? Are you there God, It?s me Margaret, Then Again Maybe I Won?t, and It?s Not the End of the World ? I must have read at least three times each (I never did get my hands on the coveted, yet controversial, Forever).

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Dear Lord, Why Did I Decide to Go to Graduate School?

At a meeting with my advisor today, she told me that I was one of the easiest graduate students that she had ever had.  I did my work on schedule.  I don?t tend have to breakdowns.  And, I have a fairly good record at winning fellowships.  What she doesn?t know is that I am a mess inside.  Every time I send out a fellowship application, I am certain that I am going to fail.  Before every meeting I have with her or another committee member, I spend hours putting together an outfit and trying on different combinations of clothes.

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I Found it in the Archives: Archival Code Breakers

I have to admit, as completely unpalatable as I find Nicolas Cage (despite his influential corner of internet memes), every once in a while I wish that archival research was a little less sitting and reading a little more jumping to action and making remarkable and miraculous connections?preferably in some deep lost underground tunnel holding documents no one has seen for a couple hundred years or more. (Dr. Jones, Jr. is clearly more acceptable than Cage, were it not for that crystal skull and his inability to get tenure, but I don?t really need to get in a row with cannibalistic natives.) Despite this desire for excitement, most archival finds and brief moments of epiphany occur only after a lot of work amidst the mundane.

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Guest Post: Natalie R., “Mormon Female Adolescence, Diaries, and Religiosity

When I started my research project on adolescent Mormon women from the late 1860s to the 1920s, I was met with questions from a few people asking me something along the lines of ?Do those sources exist?? Despite the growth of scholarship on the lived experiences of adolescents and children in the last few decades, there is, unfortunately, still some uncertainty about finding these ?elusive? sources created by children and adolescents. Thankfully for my research, I embraced this doubt as a challenge that has proven to be successful.  There are a number of diaries written by young women  in the archives, and there have already been quite a few scholarly articles centered on these diaries.

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