As crazy as it sounds, the year is coming to a close. Fall Semester is well underway (except out here in Cambridge where it is only beginning), the leaves are changing colors, and my bike ride is getting colder. Also, MHA just released its fourth and final newsletter for the year, so it’s time to keep our tradition alive of highlighting news-y things for our audience. In the words of The O’Jays and, more recently, Jalen Rose, we “gotta give the people what they want!”

What follows is information included in both the newsletter as well as items that will also be interesting to the community.

• Though the submission deadline is past, people should be excited for next year’s MHA conference, which will be held in San Antonio. Charied by Brian Cannon, who served as a mentor for several JIers, the committee includes JIer Jenny Reeder and one of JI’s founders Jared Tamez. Should be a great time.
• The Tanner Lecturer, often one of the highlights of the conference, will be Jehu J. Hanciles, the D.W. and Ruth Brooks Associate Professor of World Chirstianity at Emory’s Candler School of Theology. Hanciles is one of the leading scholars of the globalization of Christianity, especially in Africa. This is a great pick for this year’s conference theme, which continues the push for Mormon history to look beyond the American framework.
• The deadline for next year’s Restoration Studies Symposium, which is co-hosted by Sunstone and will take place in Independence on January 31-February 2, is approaching. Please turn in your submissions by October 15.
• At JWHA’s recent meeting, several JI friends received well-deserved awards. Sam Brown’s In Heaven as It is On Earth was given the Best Book Award, the JSP crew was given Best Documentary award for H1 & H2, Brittany Chapman and Rick Turley’s Women of Faith received Best Anthology, and Erin Jennings received best article. Congrats to all of them.
• This coming weekend is the Western Historical Association’s annual conference, with several JIers involved. Next month, the American Academy of Religion’s annual conference will also feature several juvenile scholars. If you are planning to attend either conference, give a signal so we can have Mormon history nerd lunches.
• Though the end of the year is coming fast, there are still a handful of phenomenal books that will be “must-haves” for JI readers coming out in the next couple months. These include JB Haws’s The Mormon Image in the American Mind: Fifty Years of Public Perception (Oxford UP), Christine Talbot’s A Foreign Kingdom: Mormons and Polygamy in American Political Culture, 1852-1890 (Illinois UP), and Eric Eliason and Tom Mould’s Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies (Utah UP).
• Also, not to be a narcissitic tease, but the first issue of Mormon Studies Review will be out late next month, and all y’all should have your breath bated.
• Also timely, the most recent issue of Journal of Mormon History went online, with several stellar entries. Make sure to read Part 1 of a 2-part series on “Utah’s First Encounter with the Federal Officers” by Ronald Walker and our own Ryan Tobler’s magisterial “‘Saviors on Mount Zion’: Mormon Sacramentalism, Mortality, and the Baptism for the Dead,” which should be required reading.

Any other major news and events I missed? Add them below.