By April 12, 2008
All of us have by now been made aware of the new movie about Emma Smith. If you’re not up to speed about it yet, please see here for David G.’s excellent review. This post is concerned, not with the film itself, but with the discussion of polygamy that was included in an article in the 11 April edition of the Deseret News.
By April 10, 2008
The latest in the Redd Center lecture series at BYU was given by Jared Farmer, Professor of History at SUNY-Stony Brook, who we had as a guest blogger here at our very own JI a week ago. Farmer spoke about his latest book, On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape, recently published by Harvard University Press. As David G. pointed out in his introduction a week ago, the book is a cultural and environmental history of Mt. Timpanogos and Utah Lake–the jewel and the bog, respectively, of Utah County. At least, that’s how they are popularly perceived in the valley today. But things were, at one time, quite different.
By April 7, 2008
Two weeks ago, just after the completion of the Easter holiday, Elder Philip Gill, a Presiding Elder in the Latter Day Church of Jesus Christ, delivered the new church’s first Easter message to the world on YouTube. For those not familiar with this organization, it was established in England in 2006, and recognizes Matthew Gill as a prophet and Joseph Smith’s rightful successor.
By April 2, 2008
Jared Farmer is the author of On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Book Cover), a cultural and environmental history of Mount Timpanogos and Utah Lake. The book is an outgrowth of his dissertation at Stanford University, where he studied under the preeminent historian of the American West, Richard White. Jared’s work is a fascinating example of cutting-edge approaches to place, memory, religion, and nature. His first book, Glen Canyon Dammed: Inventing Lake Powell and the Canyon Country, examined the controversial transformation of Glen Canyon of the Colorado River into the reservoir Lake Powell. Jared has agreed to provide us with some tidbits from On Zion’s Mount.
Dear readers of The Juvenile Instructor,
By April 1, 2008
Joseph Smith was killed in 1846 by a mob in Alton, Illinois, near the Illinois-Missouri border. Unless I am mistaken, the foregoing statement is quite obviously false on two accounts (1846; Alton). Yet, I was quite surprised to find that the source of this mistake is a well-known historian of U.S. religious history.
By April 1, 2008
The following is a review of the morning session of the Eighth Annual Mormon Studies Conference at Utah Valley State College. A review of the afternoon session is forthcoming here at the Juvenile Instructor.
By March 27, 2008
I’m happy to be blogging for JI on a more permanent basis. I have always enjoyed being a token “model-minority” in Mormon country:)
I thought it might be interesting to post some the words of Japanese Americans used when dealing with Mormonism. Some of these quotations come from oral interviews and probably represent the Nikkei’s long-standing relationship with the the area’s dominant religion as well as their perceptions of history, while the other addresses how Japanese American ethnicity and Mormonism interacted historically. If you like this first set of sources, maybe I’ll do a post with more of them.
By March 23, 2008
The Juvenile Instructor is happy to present here a lecture by Robert Millet given at a book signing at Benchmark Books in October of 2007. We want to recognize our friend Brent Brizzi for his painstaking work of recording and transcribing the lecture. In addition to this one, Brent has provided us with transcripts of additional lectures given at Benchmark Books in the recent past which he has in the past distributed, and has been gracious enough to make available to our blog. This lecture and accompanying Q&A session is quite lengthy, but there are a number of gems here. I have edited it only slightly for incidental content [bathroom directions, etc]. Enjoy:
By March 22, 2008
I have been trying to figure out how to summarize some of my findings about the way that Mormon identity affected Japanese Americans in Utah and Idaho during World War II for this post, but I have been having some trouble extracting the Mormon aspect of the story from the greater argument while still maintaining nuance and a grasp of the larger picture. Thus, I have decided to focus in on Mike Masaoka as both an emblematic and exceptional example of the way that Mormon identity interacted with Japanese American identity in Utah. Most of the narrative I am going to present represents my reading of his somewhat presumptuously titled, They Call Me Moses Masaoka and much comes from a chapter entitled “Moses in Mormonland.” Because the process of autobiographical writing inherently involves the construction and reconstruction of memory, I mostly use this narrative as an example of how a prominent Mormon Nikkei wanted to frame his and others’ experiences with Mormons. [1]
By March 19, 2008
Graduate school provides rare opportunities to find obscure references to Mormonism in texts one would otherwise never think to look at. These sources often provide interesting insights, usually alongside flawed analysis. Constance Rourke’s American Humor: A Study of the National Character is one such source.
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