By April 22, 2011
The end of the semester typically means a dearth of posts here at JI, as many of us are busy with exams, term papers, and other end-of-the-year activities. However, there is, as usual, no dearth of Mormon studies news, so consider this a catch-all of recent updates that deserve attention. And please feel free to add more in the comments.
By April 19, 2011
Historian/Documentary Editor, Joseph Smith Papers
Job Description
The Joseph Smith Papers seeks a full-time historian/documentary editor with the appropriate
academic training, research and writing skills to edit Joseph Smith?s papers. 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.
Duties will include document analysis (research regarding textual and documentary intention,
production, transmission, and reception); composition of source notes and historical
introductions; writing of annotation to provide appropriate context and to clarify or explain
passages that are unclear or challenging; regular participation in team meetings and project
committees; and professional development.
Qualifications
PhD or doctoral candidate in history, religious studies, or related discipline. Experience in
one or more of the following areas is desirable: documentary editing, archival management,
antebellum American history, American religious history, early Mormon history. Demonstration
of excellent writing and research skills required. As the highest professional standards of
documentary editing are expected of the position, including a rigorous production schedule,
the applicant must exhibit attention to detail, efficiency, flexibility, good interpersonal
communications, and the ability to work in an academic environment that requires personal
initiative and collaborative competence. Competitive salary based on experience.
Please send letter of application, vita, writing sample, and three letters of recommendation to
Joseph Smith Papers Search, c/o Viola Knecht, Church History Library, 15 E. North Temple St.,
Salt Lake City, UT 84150-1600. Applicants must also complete on-line application found at
www.ldschurch.jobs, posting 61884. Applications due by May 20.
By April 16, 2011
Historian/Writer, Church History Department
Purpose and Responsibilities
The Church History Department announces an opening for a historian/writer with an emphasis on women?s history within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Duties will include researching and writing, in collaboration with others, documentary and narrative histories on the experience of Latter-day Saint women.
Qualifications
PhD (or doctoral candidate) in history, religious studies, or related discipline, with demonstrated competence in women?s history. Excellent writing skills and the ability to work in an academic environment that requires personal initiative and collaborative competence. Professional and personal integrity required to maintain the trust and confidence of professional colleagues, department supervisors, and archivists working in other public and private repositories. Must be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, currently temple worthy.
Please send letter of application, vita, writing sample, and three letters of recommendation to Women?s History Search, c/o Viola Knecht, Church History Library, 15 E. North Temple St., Salt Lake City, UT 84150-1600. Applicants must also complete on-line application found at www.ldschurch.jobs, posting 61660. Applications due by May 20.
By April 1, 2011
Publications Internship-Church History Department
The Church History Department announces an opening for an internship during summer 2011 in the Publications Division. This will be a full time temporary position beginning in May.
Duties will involve research in nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint history and assisting the director of publications.
Qualifications:
Bachelor?s degree in history, religious studies, or related discipline, with preference given to master?s or doctoral students. In addition, the candidate should possess excellent writing and research skills as well as the ability to work in an academic environment that requires personal initiative and collaborative competence. Please attach your vita and a writing sample with your application.
To apply:
Click on this link, go to ?browse jobs,? sign in with your LDS Account number, and fill out the on-line application.
By March 30, 2011
Cynthia has a Ph.D. in Computer Science (2009). She currently works as an independent researcher on projects in Computer Science pedagogy, and occasionally teaches undergraduate courses. She blogs about Mormon life and its intersections with pop culture and feminist issues at ByCommonConsent.
By March 26, 2011
So after researching Proclus’s influence on Christianity these last few months and some conversations with my adviser, Ann wanted me to write up a new proposal. Ann really stresses that dissertations/books ought to have one clear thesis and thus we thought it best to go with the Neoplatonic one over the medieval Catholic one. I do still plan on arguing that Mormonism was a rejection of Protestantism, that crypto-Catholic ideas and practices persisted in folk practices that JS drew on, and thus Mormonism looks more Catholic than Protestant. But I’m arguing that Christian Platonism informs the direction of JS’s religiosity. Anyway, here’s my latest write up.
By March 25, 2011
I live a little over 4000 km from Jonathan Stapley which brings some unique challenges to researching and writing together. Once we had compiled hundreds of healing accounts, they were arranged in a document chronologically. We read through them separately, made notes and then had a couple of marathon phone calls to discuss our findings. During one phone conversation, we discovered multiple appearances of two healers who seemed to work together. Several references to a Sister Piper/Pyper and a Brother Patison/Patterson piqued our interest and led to deeper research into their stories. No familial connection was obvious; Christiana was married to Alexander Pyper and the mother of George D. Pyper who among other things managed the Salt Lake Theatre, was the leading tenor in the Salt Lake Opera Company and the editor of The Juvenile Instructor. Alvus Patterson had four wives, however he did have a daughter named Christiana. They received their patriarchal blessings from the same patriarch on the same day in February 1888.
We were excited to discover that Christiana had a diary that was listed in the register of the George D. Pyper manuscript collection at the University of Utah, but then disappointed that the diary couldn’t be found and the general consensus was that the old inventory was incorrect. A diary was reviewed and it was determined to be George D. Pyper’s. On a research trip to Salt Lake City, I spent some time in the Special Collections section of the Marriott Library and decided to read through George Pyper’s diary to see if I could glean any insights into his mother. It seemed that George was also a healer and that he sometimes administered with Brother Patterson as well. He recorded the completion of temple work for female relatives which in retrospect should have seemed odd, but as I knew this was a man’s diary, I chalked it up to having submitted names to be completed by female ordinance workers. The item that jolted me out of framing these events through the eyes of George Pyper was an entry deep in the diary about receiving a dress as a birthday gift. I checked the date and went to Family Search and entered the name Christiana Dollinger Pyper. Sure enough. the dates matched. The diarist was Christiana Pyper! Re-reading the entries a second time “knowing the true author and looking at the document through a different “lens” changed my perspective. It also corroborated other diarists’ accounts, happily revealed a full listing of her administrations to the sick in 1888 and 1891 and provided many insights into the culture of collaborative healing. (1)
Finding Christiana Pyper’s diary underscored the idea of the paradigm shift. As I have written elsewhere, when I began the study of women’s history, the idea of “separate spheres” or a separate women’s culture was the dominant paradigm of historical interpretation. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s groundbreaking article, “The Female World of Love and Ritual” as well as Barbara Welter’s work on the “Cult of True Womanhood” and the feminization of religion set the tone for a generation of historians who focused upon the unique bonds between women and the distinctive world they created and inhabited. Studying the participation of men and women together in healing rituals seemed to subvert the idea of separate spheres (see here) and I wondered about a new framework for interpreting women’s history. Rachel Cope’s excellent dissertation underscores this point. She states:
Although women and men both had spiritual experiences and became engaged in the conversion process, important aspects of the revival story are distinctly female, not because nineteenth century-religion was feminized, but because religious experiences thrust women into a world where they could escape the expectations of “true womanhood,” “separate spheres,” “feminization” and “sentimentality.” (2)
While part of the work of Mormon women’s history is simply unearthing untold stories, it is clear that a new interpretive framework needs to be developed. Scholars of American women’s religious history have already begun this work, but the study of Mormon women– who Cope points out were religious “outsiders” – will also require its own unique reading while being grounded in American history. A distinctive system of marriage, ritual participation and theology shaped Mormon women in the past. By placing their voices in the centre, instead of on the margins of history, new interpretations of the past will be developed and shed new light on the whole, just as the diary of Christiana Pyper did.
Kris Wright has a M.A. in History from The University of Western Ontario. She has co-authored three articles with Jonathan Stapley on Mormon healing rituals. The most recent, an article on female ritual healing, is available online.
_____________________________
By March 5, 2011
Our very own Max Mueller has recently written a fascinating article on Jane Manning James that appears in the Winter/Spring 2011 issue of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin (Vol. 39, Nos. 1 & 2). In it, Max discusses James’ experiences as a black member of the early restored Church and in a parallel manner adds insight to the modern black LDS experience through a narrative on Jerri Harwell, a Genesis Group member who brings Jane to life for Utah audiences. Max’s research on James’ is adding significant insight into the life of a woman whose story is well-known but not necessarily well-explored.
By March 2, 2011
It seems to be a common assumption that the use of folk magic objects like peep stones and divining rods had pretty well died out by the time the Saints arrived in the Great Basin. At least, we don’t talk much about them being used after that. When we speak of seer stones in a Mormon context Joseph Smith’s early treasure digging days, Book of Mormon translation, and Hiram Page are typically the topic of discussion. Such instruments were used for finding treasure, translating ancient texts, for revelation, and, in a few cases, for locating lost objects.
A while ago I came across a few references to the use of a “peep stone” that surprised me for several reasons. The date was later than I would have expected: 1856. And the peeper was younger than I expected: about 14 or 15. And the object of peeping was rather unusual.
By March 1, 2011
A few years ago, while discussing seer stones with Steve Sorensen, he mentioned that there was an obscure reference in someone’s papers that gave a formula for how to make a seer stone and that wasn’t in Quinn’s Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. Later that day he forwarded me his notes from the John Steele collection (MS 1847) at the Church Archives (now Church History Library) and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
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