From the Desk: Matthew Harris

Thanks to Kurt Manwaring for making us aware of this interview with Dr. Matthew Harris, on The LDS Gospel Topics Series: A Scholarly Engagement! You can read the rest of the interview HERE.

Continue Reading

Announcing the The Juanita Brooks Series in Mormon History and Culture

The University of Utah Press announced this morning the creation of The Juanita Brooks Series in Mormon History and Culture. Here is more from their email announcement (sign up for email updates from the press HERE):

This series, named for pioneering Mormon historian Juanita Brooks, welcomes exciting new academic monographs and contributed volumes of previously unpublished essays that break new ground in the study and understanding of Mormon history and culture. Books that explore understudied or controversial aspects of Mormonism are considered essential to the intellectual mission of the series, as are works that put Mormon history and culture in conversation with contemporary scholarly trends in transnational studies, Native American and Indigenous studies, the study of the American West, women’s history, and regional histories. Always open and inclusive, the series accepts proposals from established and emerging scholars and writers alike, while striving to publish rigorous scholarship accessible to an informed general audience.

Alex Haley, Latter-day Saints, and the Popularization of Family History

Yesterday, acclaimed actress Cicley Tyson passed away at the age of 96. Among the many roles she played in her groundbreaking and lengthy career was that of Binta, Kunta Kinte’s mother, in Alex Haley’s sensational television series, Roots. Coincidentally, the end of January also marks 44 years since Roots premiered on TV in 1977. The sights and sounds of Tyson portraying Binta’s labor and the birth of Kunta form the opening scenes of the series. There is much that has and can be said about Roots and the way that it brought Black family history and depictions of slavery to the forefront of American entertainment in commanding fashion. Indeed, it was the most watched television event to date in America.[1] Scholars have shed light on how the Roots phenomenon created unprecedented interest in family history for African Americans and captured the nation’s attention.[2] But one aspect of this fascinating story that has not been widely studied is Alex Haley’s relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and how the Church sought to ride the huge momentum for genealogy research created by Roots in its programs and messaging.

Haley’s interaction with Church leaders and his use of the Church’s genealogical resources is significant, especially in light of the Church’s priesthood and temple restrictions to people of Black African descent were still in place. About seven months after Roots premiered, BYU invited Alex Haley to its summer 1977 commencement exercises to award him an honorary doctorate degree in the humanities. On that occasion, Haley praised the Church’s genealogy library and said that if he had known about it before writing his book, he would have booked a flight to Salt Lake City right away, as it was the best in the world. On that trip to Utah, Haley also met with N. Eldon Tanner and Marion G. Romney, two members of the First Presidency of the Church. President Tanner credited Haley with inspiring people to go back even further in their genealogy research: “We’ve been trying for years to get people to go back to the fourth and fifth generations; you come along with one book and they do it.” Haley was apparently pleased to hear that and smiled.[3]

Three years later, the Church held its second World Conference on Records, a genealogy and family history symposium. A family history fervor had swept the United States in part because of the popularity of television series and book and interest had increased since the first conference in 1969.[4] As one of the preeminent speakers, Haley spoke to the Church News in advance of the conference. He was glad to see that his book had inspired families throughout the world to have family reunions and hoped to work with the Church to encourage more families to follow suit. He thought that such reunions could contribute to world peace.[5]

As a religious institution with a sacred prerogative to do family history research, the LDS Church was in step with popular genealogy movements in the twentieth century United States. Partnering with Alex Haley and the high-profile Roots book and TV series was mutually beneficial and represented a unique bridge between the Church and Black family history at time when Black Latter-day Saints could not perform ordinances for their ancestors in temples. This is just a start and the potential to discover more illuminating details in this story remains. 

[1] About 100 million people watched the series finale and about 85 percent of American households tuned in. Matthew F. Delmont, Making Roots: A Nation Captivated (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 175 and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Foreword, Reconsidering Roots: Race, Politics, and Memory, ed Erica L. Ball and Kellie Carter Jackson (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2017), xi.

[2] See, for example, Francesca Morgan, “‘My Furthest-Back Person’: Black Genealogy Before and After Roots,” Reconsidering Roots, 63-80 and Delmont, Making Roots, 153-180.

[3] Gerry Avant, “Faith Kept Him Going, ‘Roots’ Author Says,” Church News, 27 August 1977.

[4] “World Conference on Records,” Church News, 2 August 1969.

[5] Jim Boardman, “Author Encourages Histories, Reunions,” Church News, 9 August 1980.

Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Grants (Due 3/15)

See original post HERE

The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies is pleased to announce multiple awards for 2021 that are available for scholars, students, or organizations conducting research or producing public programming related to the Intermountain regions of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, or Wyoming. Applications for 2021 are due by 11:59 p.m. MST on March 15, and awardees will be notified by May 1. 

Click Here To Apply: In the midst of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on travel and other activities, many categories request explicit details on how these may impact your project, whether there are contingency plans to work amidst restrictions or if project progress would require delay until restrictions are lifted. Awards and funding opportunities are divided into categories for students, faculty, independent researchers, and public institutions. 

2021 Awards and Funding from the BYU Charles Redd Center for Western Studies

Applications are due March 15, 2021.The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies is pleased to announce multiple awards for 2021 that are available for scholars, students, or organizations conducting research or producing public programming related to the Intermountain regions of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, or Wyoming. Applications for 2021 are due by 11:59 p.m. MST on March 15, and awardees will be notified by May 1.

GO TO THEIR WEBSITE TO APPLY!

Continue Reading

Joseph Smith Papers Conference Call for Papers 2021

See original post HERE

To commemorate the upcoming completion of the Revelations and Translations series, which includes the breadth of Joseph Smith’s revelation and translation projects, the Joseph Smith Papers Project will host the fifth annual Joseph Smith Papers Conference on September 10, 2021. The conference will be broadcast digitally to allow for both local and global participation from presenters and audience members. (This was also the format of the 2020 conference.) The theme for this year’s conference is “Joseph Smith and Sacred Text in Nineteenth-Century America.”

Over the course of his life, Joseph Smith engaged in several translation projects, including the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, and the Bible revision, and he dictated numerous revelations that were published in church newspapers and print volumes. Scribes, clerks, and editors worked with Smith in these projects. Through these endeavors, he introduced his followers to new sacred texts, sought to restore and clarify doctrine, modified biblical scripture, and voiced authoritative direction from God, shaping the Latter-day Saints’ understanding of their past, present, and future. To the Saints, Joseph Smith’s translations and revelations testified of his unique prophetic role.

Continue Reading

Call for Submissions: Special Issue of *RELIGIONS* on Latter-day Saint Theology and the Environment

George Handley, Kristen Blair, and Anna Thurston are guest editing a special issue of Religions! See the information below for more on possible topics and how to submit. Flyer HERE.

Continue Reading

Call for Nominations: John Whitmer Historical Association 2021 Awards

Thanks to friend-of-JI Katherine Pollock for passing this on!

This is a call for nominations for the John Whitmer Historical Association 2021 Awards!

We welcome nominations from historians, publishers, and all supporters of Mormon history for the best works published in 2020.

Continue Reading

The Deseret News took a cheap shot at a Latter-day Saint Historian. Here’s what it got wrong.

Writing in the Deseret News this morning, my BYU colleague Hal Boyd offered his personal assessment of journalist McKay Coppins’s feature on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ history and the author’s own experience of the faith in The Atlantic. In evaluating the piece, Boyd reduces features on Latter-day Saints and Mormon history to three genres: “non-Latter-day Saint journalist[s] who look at the faith warily,” “pieces written by former or lapsed members of the church who revisit their past faith with equal parts exoticism and redemptive nostalgia,” and a third group he classifies as “active church members [who] examine their faith.” Boyd accuses this last group of “tak[ing] special pains to demonstrate just how objective they are in a well-intentioned but ultimately gauche bid to convince readers that they’re playing it straight,” or what Boyd dismissively calls “performative objectivity.” Straining to find examples, he points to two pieces: a 2005 Newsweek article and, curiously, our own Benjamin Park’s 2020 book, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier.

If it seems strange to include a book about Latter-day Saint history written by an academically-trained historian in an article about journalistic assessments of Mormonism, that’s because it is. Such an inclusion betrays an unfortunate misunderstanding of historical scholarship. And make no mistake — though Ben’s book is written for an audience beyond his academic peers, it is still very much historical scholarship, representing years of archival research, rounds of editing and peer review, and a commitment to not just telling a story, but making a historical argument.

Where Boyd sees “a gauche bid” at “performative objectivity,” other readers will (rightfully) see that very commitment on full display. The Kingdom of Nauvoo aims not only to tell a fascinating story but to demonstrate what the Mormon sojourn in Nauvoo tells us about early America, writ large. And whereas journalists from all of the camps proposed by Boyd have largely agreed that Mormonism is, as the title of Coppins’s piece puts it, “the most American religion,” Park’s argument is more subtle and interesting: Joseph Smith and his followers, he agrees, are best understood as a product of their time and place — the early nineteenth century American republic, a place of religious revivals, rapid change, and a faith in the future of the American experiment. But they also represented a distinct challenge to that republic and to that civic-minded optimism. More significantly — and this is Park’s real contribution — Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo were an affront to “the foundations of American democracy” (9).

Frustrated with the failure of local and national governments to protect their rights as American citizens from mob rule, Saints took matters into their own hands. Park describes in detail the Mormon formation of a local militia, the organization and activity of both ecclesiastical and civil courts, the provocative city charter drawn up for Nauvoo, and the bloc voting that continually frustrated non-Mormon politicians. Most radically of all, Joseph Smith and a group of his most trusted followers began making plans during this time for a theocratic government that would triumph over the failed democracy of the United States (along with all other world governments).

All of this took place against the backdrop of rapid revelation and change within the Latter-day Saint community. Smith and others began taking plural wives, challenging American conceptions of the Christian family and provoking dissent from otherwise committed followers. If this seems sensationalistic, it’s because the subject matter is sensational. It makes for gripping reading. That’s not Park trying to “play it straight” to appease non-Mormon readers; it’s him offering a close reading of the historical sources. As a historian does.

Some may quibble with Park’s conclusions. That’s good and fine. But the sources on which those conclusions are based are listed in 31 pages of detailed endnotes citing each document and archive by name, along with each earlier scholarly interpretation Park’s book builds on and revises. If the Deseret News, or any other outlet, wants to critique the book, it should start by assessing the book on its own aims — its reading of sources and its interpretation of them. That is how history works.

Job Ad: Internship with LDS Church History Department

UNITED STATES |  UT-Salt Lake City

ID 277158, Type: Temporary Part-Time

POSTING INFO

Posting Dates: 12/14/2020 – 12/28/2020

Job Family: Human Resources

Department: Church History Department

PURPOSES

This successful applicant will work with the full-time staff of the Historic Sites Division of the Church History Department to research and write interpretive guides and historical reports regarding the sacred places of the restoration. The Intern will also assist with other projects, as needed. This is an exciting and unique opportunity for someone interested in Church history and for those pursuing a career in the history field. We are looking for a motivated and hardworking self-started to join our team!

This is a paid internship, which is anticipated to last one year (12 months). This position is a part-time (approximately 28 hours per week) hourly, nonexempt position. The candidate must be currently enrolled in, or recently graduated from (within the last 12 months), an undergraduate or graduate degree program.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Continue Reading