Scholarly Inquiry: Q & A with Seth Perry

We are pleased to present a Scholarly Inquiry Q&A with Seth Perry, Assistant Professor of Religion in the Americas at Princeton University and a past guest contributor to the JI. Professor Perry earned his PhD from the University of Chicago (whoop whoop!) in 2013, and he maintains an active research interest in Mormonism, which he discusses both below and in his article “An Outsider Looks In at Mormonism,” in The Chronicle of Higher Education 52, iss. 22 (3 February 2006) [subscription required for full access]. He is also the author of “The Many Bibles of Joseph Smith: Textual, Prophetic, and Scholarly Authority in Early-National Bible Culture,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84, no. 3 (September 2016): 750-75. See my overview of that article here. Perry’s first book, imminently forthcoming from Princeton University Press, is Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States. 

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Scholarly Inquiry: A Conversation with Stephen C. Taysom, II

Eighteen months ago, Taysom was deep into work on a biography of Joseph F. Smith, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1901 to 1918. We interviewed him then about the project. Taysom recently finished work on the manuscript, and we decided to follow up to see how the project evolved over that period and what Taysom’s reflections in retrospect are.

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Scholarly Inquiry: Brent Rogers and Unpopular Sovereignty

Brent M. Rogers is the author of Unpopular Sovereignty: The Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017). He holds a Ph.D in American History from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is currently an associate managing historian for The Joseph Smith Papers and he has co-edited four volumes in the series. Brent agreed to participate in our semi-regular series, Scholarly Inquiry, by answering the following questions.

What led you to write Unpopular Sovereignty:  Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory?

This was a fun question to think about. The seed was planted as I read a couple of influential books in undergraduate courses and early in my graduate career that had me thinking about Mormons and Utah in the antebellum era (Sarah Gordon?s The Mormon Question and Will Bagley?s Blood of the Prophets). But, the book project, if I were to pinpoint its true beginning, emerged out of a research seminar I took on war and expansion in nineteenth-century America. Because there seemed to be a lack of western facing history in the course, I decided to examine the role of the western territories in antebellum political discourse. As I dug into the newspaper and congressional sources, substantive discussion about Utah emerged more prominent than I originally anticipated, so I keyed in on that discussion. Secondary sources hadn?t considered the territory west of Kansas as important, but the primary sources said otherwise. After I wrote and presented that research paper, and after subsequent conversations I convinced my dissertation committee that it was worthwhile to pursue a dissertation that placed Utah squarely in the narrative of antebellum political discourse within the context of sovereignty, territory, and power. In the few years following the completion of that dissertation I revised and enhanced that work to produce Unpopular Sovereignty.

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Scholarly Inquiry: Nicholas Frederick

Nicholas J. Frederick is an assistant professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He holds a Ph.D in the History of Christianity with an emphasis in Mormon Studies from Claremont Graduate University. Nick is the author of The Bible, Mormon Scripture, and the Rhetoric of Allusivity (FDU Press, 2016). He has agreed to participate in the JI’s semi-regular series, Scholarly Inquiry, by answering questions about his book.

What led you to write The Bible, Mormon Scripture, and the Rhetoric of Allusivity?

While working on my Ph.D at Claremont Graduate University, I started getting into Intertextuality, in particular the intertextuality between the New Testament and Mormon Scripture. I was fascinated by the questions that were raised when the Book of Mormon or the D&C would quote or allude to the writings of John or Paul or Matthew. 

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Scholarly Inquiry: Q&A with Thomas Simpson

[We are pleased to share another Scholarly Inquiry, this time with Thomas Simpson, an instructor at Philips Exeter Academy. We have highlighted his scholarship here at JI twice before. His long awaited book, American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism, 1867-1940, is forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press. Make sure to pre-order his book from this site and use discount code 01DAH40 to get 40% off.]

1) How did you become interested in this topic?

Partly through deep and close family connections to Latter-day Saints, including many who have gone to BYU and earned graduate degrees from universities outside the Intermountain West. But I didn’t get seriously interested in the academic study of Mormonism until I was in graduate school at the University of Virginia. I was preparing for doctoral examinations, and intending to write a dissertation on the Social Gospel, when I became consumed by the question of Mormonism’s evolution from a small, persecuted sect into a vibrant, global faith. Shortly after I passed my exams (hallelujah!) my adviser, Heather Warren, gave me the green light to develop a proposal for a dissertation in Mormon history. I started searching through Davis Bitton’s Guide to Mormon Diaries & Autobiographies ? initially looking for evidence of Mormon reactions to the Woodruff Manifesto ? and I noticed something peculiar: a pattern of Mormons migrating to elite universities, as early as the 1870s. It didn’t make any sense to me, and I wanted to know more.

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Scholarly Inquiry: A Conversation with Stephen C. Taysom

Taysom is presently working on a biography of Joseph F. Smith, to be published with the University of Utah Press. He’s graciously agreed to an interview. 

Your previous book was a theoretical study of boundary maintenance among nineteenth century Mormons and Shakers. What led you to next write a biography of Joseph F. Smith?

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The People Who Stir America: BackStory on Revivals and Prophets

The December 11, 2015 episode of the impeccably crafted history podcast BackStory is worth a listen, on the topic of ?American Prophets.? In many ways, it?s a sequel to their ?Born Again? episode on the history of American religious revival back in April, continuing the story of charismatic leaders and religious movements forging transformation and innovation in an intense cultural pressure cooker. In ?American Prophets,? the hosts explore Neolin (Delaware / pan-Indian), William Seymour (Asuza Street, Pentecostalism), Brigham Young (Mormonism), Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology) and Elijah Muhammed (Nation of Islam). When added to the earlier episode?s portrayal of the First and Second Great Awakenings, Handsome Lake, Sam Jones, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Billy Graham, we now have a nice two-hour audio documentary on diverse American new religious movements featuring a stellar cast of religious scholars. [1]

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Scholarly Inquiry: Christine Talbot

Christine Talbot is the author of A Foreign Kingdom: Mormons and Polygamy in American Political Culture, 1852-1890 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013).  We are delighted that she agreed to an interview with the JI about this important new book.  Christine is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Gender Studies Program at the University of Northern Colorado.

Yours is the latest entry in a number of books on polygamy in the Utah territory.  What makes yours distinct from, say, Sarah Barringer Gordon’s, or Kathryn Daynes’s?

I think my work builds on the previous work of Sarah Barringer Gordon, Kathryn Daynes, Terryl Givens, and others by bringing in a cultural perspective, especially in terms of anti-Mormon rhetoric. Cultural history led me to different conclusions about the nature of the Mormon question. A cultural history allows us to see what I think is one of the central roots of the Mormon question, issues of American national identity and citizenship. These issues were profoundly gendered in nineteenth century America; citizenship was built on the idea of a masculine public sphere where citizenship was enacted, juxtaposed to a feminine private sphere in the home where future citizens were trained. (However, married women?s property acts and the woman suffrage movement provided ample ammunition to contest the masculinity of citizenship). My book shows that the practice of polygamy upset the historical distinction between public and private in ways that many Americans found troubling precisely because it is a distinction that never held in the first place. Plural marriage denaturalized and deconstructed the distinction between public and private that upheld American ideals of citizenship. That, I think, is one of the things about plural marriage that so upset other Americans.

Having spent so much time with polygamy, what do you think are remaining areas that are worth exploring in relation to it?

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Scholarly Inquiry: Samuel Brown, Part 1

Samuel M. Brown is a medical researcher, ICU physician, historian of religion and culture, and friend to many at the Juvenile Instructor. Today he fields our questions on his recent foray from academic research into devotional writing for an LDS audience. In particular we asked him about the significance of history for that kind of enterprise. This is Part 1 of a 2-Part feature. [For Part 2, see here.]

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Scholarly Inquiry: Ignacio Garcia, Part 2

For Part 1, see here.

5. How do you envision your memoir contributing to both Mormon studies and Chicano studies?

While all of us want a legacy most of us never do enough to make it beyond a footnote or a family member?s sacrament meeting talk.

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