Guest Post: Rosemary Avance, “Why in the world would a non-Mormon study the Church, anyway?”

Rosemary Avance is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania?s Annenberg School for Communication where she studies the intersection of religion, culture, and the media.  She is currently the recipient of the Eccles Mormon Studies Fellowship at the University of Utah?s Tanner Humanities Center.  She is spending the year in residence in Salt Lake City, researching and writing her dissertation on modern Mormon identities.

I?m so pleased to be guest posting here at JI?one of my favorite blogs and an important source for keeping up with modern Mormon identities.  My dissertation is on just that topic: how Mormons today negotiate their identities, and particularly how the internet plays a role in the articulation of various heterodoxies.  I?ve been hesitant to comment or post here and elsewhere in the bloggernacle because my research tracks, in part, representations of Mormonism in real time?so contributing to those representations by offering my ?take? threatens to, essentially, muddy my data.  Despite all the blogs, message boards, and Facebook pages, it turns out that Mormondom online is actually quite a small world.

But I?m pleased for the opportunity to introduce myself and my academic work, so my plan is to offer a bit of my theoretical orientation to LDS identities, explain my interest and background, and then maybe complain a bit.  Because the work I?m doing is ? at the moment?incredibly frustrating.

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Rape and Marriage in Mormon History

Note: In response to the complaints in response to Saskia?s blog post and its use of a few curse words, I feel obligated to warn readers that this post and its responses may contain some light vulgarity and adult topics.  Anyone not mature enough to handle such language or topics should not read the post.

A few weeks ago, I went to a conference on Mormon women held at the University of Utah.  The room was filled with elderly feminists who had advocated for a more liberal Mormon view of women in the 1980s, middle-aged women who had commandeered their husbands into watching the kids for a few hours, and graduate students dressed in jeans and t-shirts.  The panels were varied but held together by a common focus on Mormon women and a desire to make some sort-of change in the way that women are treated in a church that privileges male experience and male members.  One of the presentations that was particularly poignant was Jennifer Finlayson-Fife?s presentation on the sexuality of Mormon women.  She described the difficulty created by expectations that young women be sexually attractive and chaste at the same.  When unwanted sexual intimacy occurs, Mormon girls are stuck between allowing him to continue, risking their purity and standing before God, and saying ?no? and losing his interest.  As a result, many Mormon women feel guilty for sexual contact they neither wanted nor consented to.

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Patrick Mason’s “Mormon Social Ethics” in Christian Century

In the August 22nd issue of Christian Century, there was a plethora of pieces on Mormonism due to Mitt Romney’s official nomination as the GOP presidential candidate. Most saw, read, and praised the thoughtful piece by Kathleen Flake on Mormonism’s scriptural canon. Others were somewhat bemused with Richard Bushman’s list of “essential books on Mormonism” (which I personally found somewhat puzzling). But there were also pieces behind the CC’s paywall that deserve attention: Ed Blum’s incisive review of Gutjahr’s The Book of Mormon: A Biography, and a very nuanced and important essay by Patrick Mason on “Visions of Zion: Changes in Mormon Social Ethics.” Not only is it great to see the CC spend so much time on Mormons, but even better to see them give the space to thoughtful and leading scholars in the field. Since many here probably don’t subscribe to the magazine, I thought I would gist Mason’s thoughtful piece.

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Goodbye to Jared T.

Recently, we here at Juvenile Instructor learned something that brings us great sorrow: Jared T., one of the blog?s original founders and most frequent contributors, had decided that the time had come for him to pursue other projects.  Jared was present at the conversation at J-Dawg?s when someone proposed a blog focusing on Mormon history. 

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Scholarly Inquiry: Spencer Fluhman takes your questions

Scholarly Inquiry is an ongoing series at the Juvenile Instructor. It aims to introduce recent scholarship in Mormon studies to a wider audience and to involve a larger community of scholars in attempts to situate the Mormon experience in wider contexts and new and innovative ways. Visiting scholars will include both Mormons and those from other faith traditions, as well as historians of Mormonism and those whose primary research interests focus on other subjects. Previous participants include Mark Ashhurst-McGee (here and here), Mark Staker (here and here), Stephen Taysom (here and here), Patrick Mason (here and here), and Paul Gutjahr (here and here). 

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Call For Papers: Mormon History Association 2013 Annual Meeting: ?The Crowded Landscape of the Mormon West(s): Agency and Action from the Wasatch Front to the Pacific Rim?

The Call for Papers is below. Please use this thread to, should you desire, make contacts, organize panels, and find other like-minded scholars planning on joining us in 2013

The 48th annual conference of the Mormon History Association will be held in Layton, Davis County, Utah, on June 6-9, 2013. Our theme emphasizes the particular history of Davis County and other early Wasatch Front Mormon settlements, but also invites broad investigation of what ?Wests? of all types, times, and places have meant to various branches of the Restoration movement. Further, the idea of multiple Mormon frontiers challenges us to consider Mormonism?s encounters with other groups, cultures, and institutions.

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CFP: Faith & Knowledge Conference, 2013

Mormon-Themed Sessions at the Conference on Faith and History

On October 4-6, Gordon College will play host to the 28th biennial meeting for the Conference on Faith and History. Keynote speakers include David Hempton (recently appointed as Dean of Harvard Divinity School) and Mark Noll, and there are loads of fascinating paper topics that will be addressed. Most relevant to this crowd, there are two Mormon-themed sessions with familiar faces. Bellow you’ll find the panels, papers, and names.

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Women and the LDS Church Conference report, Part II

Continuing discussion of Women and the LDS Church: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Aug 24-25, 2012 Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah and the LDS Church History Library
Organizers ? Kate Holbrook and Matt Bowman

The perfect cap to my summer, which included more writing about Mormon women and their history than was usual for me, was attending both days of the ?Women and the LDS Church Conference.? On a personal note, it gathered many scholars I either knew or wanted to know, including nearly a quorum of the JI permabloggers, and I was thirsty to be part of the conversation and soak up some Western sunshine. The conference featured incredibly high-quality presentations and honest but never rancorous audience participation, and a warm Salt Lake welcome both at the gorgeous City Library and in the sandstone brick building of the Fort Douglas Officers Club on the University of Utah campus. Like a pilgrim to Lourdes, I came away with a vial of sustaining water. I hope we will be talking and thinking about what happened at this conference for a very long time.

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Forging the Thunderbolts: A Report of the ?Women and the LDS Church: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Conference,? August 24-25, 2012.

Overheard at this weekend’s conference:  ?This could be Mormon women?s Seneca Falls.?

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