By February 8, 2009
Although this is noted at MormonConferences.org, Dr. Bushman asked that I use the JI to advertise this interesting conference on Mormon thought and engineering to be held in March at Claremont Graduate University. So, here’s the info…
By February 6, 2009
Please join us in welcoming the latest guest blogger here at the Juvenile Instructor. Ryan T. describes himself thus:
Hello Juvenile Instructor! I?m Ryan Tobler, an undergrad just winding up my degree in English/History at BYU and nursing ulcers while I wait to hear back on my applications to grad programs in religious and Transatlantic studies. My areas of interest are still crystallizing, but broadly I study British and American 18th and 19th century intellectual history (generally with a Transatlantic paradigm). More specifically I?m interested in literature and literary figures as public intellectuals, secularization, and cosmopolitanism, especially as all these bear upon religion. These issues typically put me on the more ?liberal? and learned fringe of the religion of that period: Unitarians, Universalists, and so on. I enjoy travel and languages, cross-country skiing, ?canyoneering,? and play soccer at every available opportunity.
Thanks for having me aboard.
By January 26, 2009
The Fourth Annual Brigham Young University Church History symposium will be held on Friday, February 27, 2009 in the Conference Center at Brigham Young University. The conference, sponsored by the BYU Religious Studies Center in cooperation with the Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, takes as its theme this year, “Preserving the History of the Latter-day Saints: Church Historians, the Church Historian’s Office, and the Recording and Publication of the Latter-day Saint Past.” Below is a preliminary schedule:
By January 15, 2009
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, jolly new semester, usw. to all. I?m still working on (read: doing stuff higher on my priority list at the expense of) the last installments of the ?Reading Like a Conspiracy Theorist? series. In that direction, however, I give you a ?cage match?: I put two articles in a steel cage with suitable quantities of folding chairs and then observed the results.
By January 13, 2009
I picked up the latest issue of Fides et Historia last week and was pleased to find an article by JI’s own Matt Bowman. The paper, entitled “The Crisis of Mormon Christology: History, Progress, and Protestantism, 1880-1930,” is an expansion of what Matt initially presented at the 2007 Summer Seminar, and examines “how Mormon visions of Christ changed during a period in which their experience of culture was simultaneously destructive and creative: the tumultuous years around the turn of the century, which witnessed both the destruction of polygamy (and the utopian society it represented) and a forcible reconciliation with the United States.”[1]
By December 29, 2008
On December 10, 2008 Benchmark Books hosted a lecture/book signing with George Smith for his newly released Navuoo Polygamy: “But We Called It Celestial Marriage”. We hope to have a review up soon of this book. In the mean time, we want to provide a transcript of the proceedings. Special thanks go to Brent Brizzi for his painstaking work in providing a transcription of the evening’s lecture.
By December 18, 2008
James Twitchell. Shopping for God: How Christianity Went From in Your Heart to In Your Face. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. 324 pp.
James Twitchell, professor of English and Advertising at The University of Florida, explains on his website that his research interests include the effort to “interpret American culture in terms of commercialism.”
By December 15, 2008
I am making my way through Daniel Walker Howe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. I’ve skimmed through most of it before, but because it is the primary text to be used for a course I’m TAing next semester, I’m taking my time and more thoroughly analyzing the book.
By December 13, 2008
I just finished The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (Penguin, 2006), an 800-page tome by Niall Ferguson, the Lawrence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution. [Tisch and Hoover, an interesting pair of sponsors.] Ferguson recounts the violent first half of the 20th century with reference to nations (in the classical sense of “peoples” or, more modernly, ethnic groups) rather than states, but doesn’t leave much hope for improvement as we move through the first half of the 21st century. I’ll throw out a lifeline [hint: religion] in the closing paragraph.
© 2026 – Juvenile Instructor
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