Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup

Another week, another Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup

On the more academic side of things, the annual conference of the John Whitmer Historical Association kicked things off this weekend in Lamoni, Iowa. Check out the twitter feed for JI Ben’s tweets on the conference. The feed also confirms rumors that LDS Church Historian Steven E. Snow is in attendance. BYU’s L. Tom Perry Special Collections has advertised a position for Curator of 19th and 20th Century Mormon and Western Americana Books. Also, the Mormon Texts Project announced that five historical Mormon e-books have been added to Project Gutenberg. If you’re in the Logan area next week, come hear venerable historian Ron Walker speak on Brigham Young and the Utah War at the 20th Annual Arrington Lecture.

Elder Snow and other Church History Department officials spoke at a press conference recently that provided details on the Church History Museum’s permanent exhibit renovation, “The Heavens Are Opened,” scheduled to open October 2015. As several media outlets noted, the new exhibit will augment the museum’s artifact collection with technology to enhance the story of the early Restoration (1820-1846). These newspaper articles interpret the new exhibit within the church’s recent efforts to approach its history with transparency (with the Joseph Smith Papers and the Gospel Topics essays as the most notable examples), as the exhibit will attempt to tackle difficult historical issues, such as multiple accounts of the First Vision, seer stones and Book of Mormon translation, and Nauvoo polygamy. 

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Jared Hickman on “The Book of Mormon as Amerindian Apocalypse”

Several years ago–perhaps 2009 or 2010–I first heard about a paper slated to be published in a major literary journal that radically reinterpreted the Book of Mormon as an Amerindian apocalypse. Whispers of both its imminent publication and its brilliance continued, and at some point, I was forwarded a prepublication draft of the paper. This isn’t altogether unusual in Mormon Studies–unpublished papers and theses, typescripts of difficult-to-access manuscript sources, and PDFs of out-of-print books passed from person to person have a long, storied, and sometime litigious history in the often insular world of Mormon scholarship. But unlike other instances I’m aware of, the importance of this paper was not in its access to otherwise unavailable primary source material or its controversial content, but rather in its interpretive significance.

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Book Review: Michael Homer, Joseph’s Temples: The Dynamic Relationship Between Freemasonry and Mormonism”

Michael W. Homer, Joseph?s Temples: The Dynamic Relationship Between Freemasonry and Mormonism (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2014).

There are few topics in Mormon history more fraught than the relationship between Mormonism and masonry. From the Mormon apologetic folklore that Joseph Smith only attended three masonic meetings to the anti-Mormon accusation that the temple rituals were merely plagiarized masonic rites, this is a topic that enlivens discussion in academic classrooms and missionary companionship study alike. Michael Homer?s Joseph?s Temples is the most recent contribution to this discussion, as it is a vastly expanded version of his previous work on the topic. And though it may not be up to addressing the deeper and more complex issues involved with the topic that are demanded by today?s Mormon studies field, it is the culmination of four decades of Mormon scholarship on the religion?s contested history with the contested fraternity.

Unlike most work on Mormonism and masonry, this book is not dedicated to the two years between Joseph Smith?s introduction of temple endowments, which came months after his induction to the Nauvoo Lodge, and his death in Carthage Jail, when his last words were the masonic call for distress. Rather, this book has a very broad chronological and geographic sweep, detailing freemasonry?s development in Renaissance Europe to masonry?s demise and resurgence in Utah. Half of the book does, though, detail with the Nauvoo period, which chapters dedicated to race, gender, ritual, and succession. Though this framework for chapters made it somewhat redundant at times?and certainly did not help with the book?s length?it did add to the book?s exhaustive nature, which is indeed its best strength.

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Exponent II Turns Forty

Exponent II’s board in 1974 and 2014 (credit: Heather Sundahl)

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Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup

Let’s dive right in:

First things first: the Church History department is now on Tumblr! I’ve already added it to my blog roll and look forward to more fun and informative posts.

Then, a Trib article on the (presumed) relationship between Mormons and the GOP, and a Huffington Post article on Mormons, social media, and progressive activism.

And because this post deserved another link, and these are words I never thought I’d read in one sentence, “Polygamist women in ninja costumes” involved in nefarious activity. See KUTV for more details on what is a funny headline for a sad story.

Lastly, a reminder that the deadline for this year’s Mormon History Association is coming up! All submissions are due October 1. You can find the CFP here.

Feel free to add your links in the comments!

Tips for Researching at BYU (Online)

The newly redesigned Harold B. Lee Library website is a great resource. Having spent a good deal of time with the site I thought it would be useful to highlight resources and (generally) overlooked goodness at BYU’s libraries and archives for your Mormon Studies research.

L. Tom Perry Special Collections

You know what it is, but did you know the Special Collections provides RSS feeds for the following?

• New Acquisitions
• New Resources
• Collection Highlights

The feeds can be a bit spotty, but the collection highlights are at least monthly and very helpful. One blog recently featured the excellent Newel K. Whitney Papers, which were digitized not long ago by the staff there. A few more highlights include: a direct link to search the Special Collections’ finding aids: http://findingaid.lib.byu.edu/, Trails of Hope: Overland Diaries and Letters, 1846?1869, and a web map that shows all geocoded (items with a geographic location) collections (over 3900 items!).

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five reasons to visit the Church History Museum

1. There’s something for everyone: exhibits on Relief Society history, Presidents of the Church, Book of Mormon Fiesta…

2. One exhibit, “Practicing Charity: Everyday Daughters of God,” features some striking art about the breadth and depth of womanhood and charity. Regular JI readers might remember this post, in which curator Lauren Allred Hurtado introduced the exhibit. (Not in Utah? You can see an online version of the exhibit here.)

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A More Diverse Mormon History Association, or How the 2014 Tanner Lecture Has Haunted Me Since June

I’d like to offer some thoughts I’ve had on Jehu J. Hanciles’ Tanner Lecture at the 2014 meeting of the Mormon History Association. During his lecture, Professor Hanciles, a Professor of Global Christianity at Emory University, shared his research on the growth of Mormonism in Africa.

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Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup

And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be [links]:

First up, a couple of items from a little beyond a week ago: The Salt Lake Tribune wrote about the latest exhibit at the Church History Library, a veritable treasure trove of rare documents and publications from the archives.  Over at Religion in American History, Charlie McCary and Michael Graziano introduced readers to a course they’re team-teaching at Florida State this semester on Religion & Law in U.S. History. See Part I here and Part II here.

Last Saturday, Slate‘s “The Vault” featured a “day-by-day commemorative map of the Mormon journey West” from the late 19th century. According to Rebecca Onion, “The map?s commemorative publication in 1899 seems to show how quickly pilgrimage tourism, now common among Saints, had taken hold.” Speaking of the late 19th century, it was in 1893 that the LDS Church was denied a seat at the World’s Parliament of Religions held in conjunction with the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Next year, 122 years later, the Parliament will be held in the heart of Mormonism, Salt Lake City.

The Givenses remained in the news this week, with Terryl and Fiona each participating in a Reddit AMA on r/latterdaysaints. They also joined Doug Fabrizio on RadioWest for an interview about their latest book.

Over at A Motley Vision, Scott Hales lays out “a fifteen-week reading course in the Mormon novel.” Check it out here.

We’ll wrap things up this week with a handful of conference announcements: The Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture has posted a CFP for their annual conference, to be held next March in Boston. Proposals are due October 3 (for single papers) and October 17 (for complete sessions). Miles Mullin previews this year’s Conference on Faith and History annual conference at The Anxious Bench. Colleen McDannell is giving one of the four plenary addresses on the subject of “Heritage Religion and the Mormons.? And finally, in what looks to me like the conference of the years, Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History and the Danforth Center at WUSTL are co-sponsoring a conference on “Religion and Politics in 21st Century America” (in Dallas, TX on November 8). The roster of presenters is a veritable who’s who of the best and brightest young scholars of American religious history, including JI’s good friend Spencer Fluhman, who will present on “Never-Ending Mormon Moments.”

Dialogue seeks a new editor