The Age of Cultural Power: Reflections on “Mormonism in Cultural Contexts: A Symposium in Honor of Richard Bushman”

What follows are my reflections on “Mormonism in Cultural Contexts,” a conference that took place on Saturday, June 18, 2011, in honor of Richard Bushman’s 80th birthday. The organizers—Steve Harper, Spencer Fluhman, Reid Neilson, and Jed Woodworth—deserve many congratulations for putting together such a great event.

Mormonism at Upcoming Historical Conferences

As most of our readers probably know, the Mormon History Association’s annual conference will be held next week in St. George, Utah. The program looks great, and a number of JIers will be presenting and participating. I look forward to hearing great papers, catching up with old friends, and hopefully making new ones. For those students who plan on being there, make sure to attend the student reception on Friday evening after the awards banquet at 9:15 pm; it’s a great place to relax and meet other young scholars studying Mormon history–plus there’s free food and door prizes.

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Where Heaven Meets Earth; Or, the Importance of the Joseph Smith Papers

[This past Wednesday, March 23, I was privileged to take part in a bloggernacle event with the Joseph Smith Papers folk via internet in honor of the release of the third volume overall and second volume in the Revelations and Translations Series. General information on the volume can be found here. Since many participants of the event have already outlined both the happenings of the meeting and the contents of the book, this post gives a general reflection of the project that I came away with after listening, once again, to the volume editors explain the purpose and mission of the project.]

Sixty-five thousand. That?s how many copies of Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 1 is currently in circulation. Most scholarly papers editions?typically limited to presidents, founding fathers, or other iconic figures?are fortunate to reach four digits, and a vast majority of those are purchased by libraries and research institutions. When the most recent edition of the Thomas Jefferson Papers: Retirement Series rolled off the press several months ago, there was no press conference, no advertisement campaign, not even a ?based on your previous purchases, you may be interested in?? email from Amazon. Papers project volumes aren?t generally on even a bibliophile?s wish list. But copies of the Joseph Smith Papers are purchased en masse. They are showcased in the front shelves of Deseret Book, offered for impressive discounts on Amazon and Barnes & Noble (even if the discounts rarely hold), and are displayed prominently in numerous Mormon households. And thus, when a new volume was released last week, the great folks at the LDS Church History Library hold a blogger event. Naturally.

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Patrick Mason answers your questions

Thanks to Matt and everyone at JI for this opportunity.

For those of us who are interested in Mormon history, particularly in graduate school or the early years of our academic careers, the question of how to position oneself is always a vexed one. I was one who very consciously did NOT want to write a ?Mormon dissertation.? That?s why I chose a comparative topic: violence against religious minority groups in the postbellum South. Mormons were one of these groups, but at the time of my dissertation proposal I thought they would represent only a minor aspect of the study. I was as surprised as anyone when they turned out to be the best part of the story, and got twice the coverage in the dissertation and eventually became the centerpiece of my book.

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Scholarly Inquiry: Patrick Mason

Our next Scholarly Inquiry will be with Patrick Mason, who will in the fall assume the Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. We invite you to submit questions for Patrick – on his research, present and past, on his work at Notre Dame, and of course, on the Hunter Chair, below; answers will soon be forthcoming.

Patrick Mason is currently Research Associate Professor at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and Associate Director for Research of a multi-year research initiative called ?Contending Modernities: Catholic, Muslim, Secular.? In the fall he will assume his new duties as Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University.

His new book is The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (Oxford University Press, 2011). He has also published articles on topics including the history of Utah state legislation against interracial marriage, anti-Jewish violence in the South, the role of religion in the African American protest tradition, the possibilities of Mormon peacebuilding, and most recently on theodemocracy in 19th-century Mormonism.

Essential Documentary Sources in LDS History

Continuing a series of posts over the last month or so, this thread aims to give a broad list of important documentary sources in Mormon history. By “thread,” I mean that I mostly want this to be more of a discussion with most suggestions coming from readers as opposed to me presenting my own canonical list.

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Essential Articles in Mormon History

As I worked on a hypothetical comps list for Mormon history, it quickly became apparent that there have been a large number of important articles over the decades—a point that was made even more vivid in the responses. This post aims to outline the most important, best written, required-for-a-legitimate-overview-of-Mormonism articles over the past half century.

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Announcement: Spencer Fluhman Hired By the BYU Department of History

In 2004, J. Spencer Fluhman joined the faculty of the department of Church History and Doctrine in the BYU Department of Religious Education (“The Religion Department” as it’s commonly known) as a full-time employee. In the interim he has rapidly gained a reputation not only for solid scholarship but for his engaging and entertaining teaching style. He recently published an important piece about Joseph Smith’s polygamy in the latest number of Mormon Historical Studies and his dissertation, ?Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Antebellum America” will be published within the year. He also recently finished a term on the board of the Mormon History Association. Many of us here at the JI count Spencer as a mentor and a friend as well as a colleague.

We’re pleased to announce that this past week, Spencer was hired by the BYU department of history and will begin teaching in the fall.  Please join us in congratulating Spencer on this new chapter in his career.

Announcement: The New Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies is. . . .

Patrick Q. Mason. He did his graduate work at Notre Dame under George Marsden and recently published a form of his dissertation as The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Antebellum South (I have to say that the title of his dissertation, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Mob,” is pretty dang awesome). He has also published several articles of note. Apparently it won’t be official until March, but the word is now out.

Congrats, Pat. This is great news for Claremont, too.

Guest Post: Rachel Cope on Religious Education at BYU

Rachel Cope has a PhD in American History from Syracuse University and is a Professor of Church History and Doctrine in the BYU Religious Education Department. You can read more about her background in a previous post when she participated in the JI’s Women In The Academy Series.

This time last year, I was on the job market and I found myself confronting a question I thought I had already answered: did I want to be a history professor (anywhere) or a church history professor at BYU? You see, I had decided that I wanted to teach religion at BYU during the summer following my freshman year, and I had been working toward that goal for a very long time. But, upon completing my PhD, hiring freezes and my passion for history led to some doubt about which direction I should move in. I did not want to set my scholarship aside–my passion for women’s religious history is a part of who I am–as some friends and mentors suggested I might have to do if I accepted a job in religious education. So I spent months jumping back and forth as I considered every aspect of both options.

During this time, I recalled an experience I had had with my favorite nun when staying in a convent in Albany, New York. While in a rather reflective mood, I wrote the following:

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