2013 in Retrospect: An Overview of Noteworthy Books and Articles in Mormon History

The last few years have been good for Mormon history.

This is the fifth annual installment of my “Retrospect” series here at JI, in which I offer an overview of scholarship in the field from the last twelve months. (For previous installments, see, in reverse chronological order, here, here, here, and here.) I always enjoy these posts, as it not only allows me to keep track of everything that has been done, but also see broader trends in the field. And to better accomplish that latter goal, I include articles from the last twelve months as well, since that gives a broader understanding of the current historiographical interests and movements.

As always, while I aim to be broad and liberal in scope, I am still human with my own interests and biases. Thus, it is very likely I overlooked some important books and articles, so it is your job to fill in my gaps in the comments. And just like last year, at the end of the post I will offer my own picks for MHA’s awards, and encourage you to do the same.

Also, remember that you can find the best and most in-depth tracing of Mormon studies at the recently launched Mormon Studies Review!

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When Did Mormons Become Straight: The Intersections of Mormon History and Queer Theory

A few weeks ago, I read Mark Rifkin?s When Did Indians Become Straight for a workshop hosted by the University of Michigan?s American Indian and Queer Studies Now Interdisciplinary Groups. I was surprised to see Mormonism mentioned within the text. Rifkin?s key argument is that heterosexuality is defined by more than the number of partners that an individual has. Ideas about racial purity, couplehood, and domesticity also mark what it means to be heterosexual. Because many American Indian groups rejected a focus on the nuclear family as the normative family model, Rifkin argues that they cannot be considered ?straight.? Mormonism serves for Rifkin as an example of a religious faith in the nineteenth century that became ?perverse? because of its rejection of traditional understandings of marriage and domesticity.

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Mormon History and Indian History

Todd Compton, award-winning author of the recently-published biography of “Apostle to the Indians” Jacob Hamblin, contributes this installment in the JI’s Mormons and Natives Month.

The problem with Mormon history is that it focuses on Mormons. I make this paradoxical statement to intentionally overstate the case?but there is some truth to it. We Mormons have never existed in a bubble; we have always interacted with non-Mormons. A historian can, of course, focus on the Mormon side of things, and you would expect a writer of ?Mormon history? to do so, to a certain extent. However, if we don?t take the non-Mormon side of the story seriously, looking at it thoroughly and even sympathetically, we will not even understand the Mormon side of the story in a careful, holistic way. (Looking at the non-Mormon side of our history sympathetically can be difficult for modern loyal Mormons, given the polarized Mormon/anti-Mormon conflicts throughout nineteenth-century Utah history.)

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Arapeen, the Ute Prophet

Filed away in the Brigham Young Papers at the Church History Library, there is a document that records the vision of a nineteenth-century prophet. That visionary, however, was not Brigham Young. Rather, it was Arapeen, a leading Ute chief during the Mormons? first two decades in the Great Basin. That the Saints believed that Arapeen had received a legitimate revelation is revealed in the language they used to categorize the document. John Lowry, Jr., the Manti resident who interpreted for Arapeen, and George Peacock, who acted as scribe, entitled the document ?Vision of Arapine on the night of the 4th of Feb 1855.? Later, after it had been sent to Young?s office in Salt Lake City, an unidentified clerk scrawled ?The Lord to Arrowpin? in the margins.[1] Arapeen?s vision provides a fascinating window into the Utes? hybrid religious culture that was in the process of formation in the years following the Mormons? arrival in 1847.

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Thoughts on Indigenous Mormon Studies

We are pleased to have this guest post by Professor Matthew Kester who is the author of Remembering Iosepa: History, Place, and Religion in the American West (Oxford University Press, 2013), the university archivist, and an assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University Hawaii.

My training as an historian of Oceania and the American West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and my role as the custodian of archival collections on Mormonism in Oceania, led me to write on interactions between Mormons and Kanaka Maoli, the indigenous people of Hawai’i. Both Oceania and the American West are regions where indigenous people experienced massive, disruptive political, social, and economic change, and Mormon missionaries and settlers played an important role in that change. I want to use this opportunity to reflect on what I feel are some of the more important themes in the study of Mormonism and indigenous people, and suggest some ways that they might be responsibly put to use. Important, because exploring these themes will increase our understanding of these interactions and the communities they created. Responsible, because they do so in a way that represents indigenous people as full historical subjects, and as active historical agents who negotiated (and continue to negotiate) disruptive periods in their history on their own terms, at least within the confines of the larger power structures imposed by colonization, settlement, and in many cases, the erosion or loss of political sovereignty and self-determination.

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Bloggernacle, Meet The Mormon Studies Review

(Cross-posted at By Common Consent. Also, the first three paragraphs should be read in the voice of Billy Mays, and taken in the spirit of the ?Tribute to Doin? It Wrong? video. The pdf of the inaugural Mormon Studies Review‘s Table of Contents can be downloaded here.)

Do you suffer too many sleepless nights, wondering if Mormonism can add anything to the study of ethics?

Struggling to keep up with developments in the seemingly always-nascent (sub)field of Mormon studies? Do you ever walk through the book aisle and think, ?holy fetch, when did that book come out?? Have you ever found yourself wondering, ?what the heck is Mormon studies, anyway?” Or, does a sleepless night rarely go buy without you asking, ?well, how does the study of Mormonism illuminate the translocative elements of religious studies?? Well, you are not alone!

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Mormon Studies Weekly Roundup

Most of our team that contributes links for the weekly roundup have been preoccupied this week, so the MSWR is a bit light in terms of quantity (though certainly not quality) this week. Let’s jump right in:

James Goldberg has written/curated an informative, fascinating, and, quite frankly, beautiful account of a Latter-day Saint exodus in covered wagons that most Mormons probably know nothing about (I certainly didn’t before reading the post). Check out online exhibit, “The Armenian Exodus,” at history.lds.org, to read more about the early 20th century journey of Mormon migrants from Turkey to Syria. Once you’ve finished there, head on over to Keepapitchinin to read Ardis’s complementary post that adds a bit more detail to the online exhibit and links to previous posts on Armenian Latter-day Saints at Keepa. You’ll be glad you did.

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Indian Removal, Zion, and the westward orientation of early Mormonism

This post is adapted from a presentation given at the 2012 Sidney B. Sperry Symposium at Brigham Young University.*

Ideologies can turn heads. In United States of America, ideological head turning has often been westward. In this post I argue that it was the ideology and force of Indian Removal that turned the heads of early Mormons and oriented them to the West.

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Introducing the Utah American Indian Digital Archive

By Cassandra Clark

Beginning in 2008, staff at the American West Center of the University of Utah, the Marriot Library, Utah?s Division of Indian Affairs, and the Department of Heritage and Arts worked together to create the Utah American Indian Digital Archive (UAIDA). This keyword searchable online digital archive contains primary and secondary sources pertaining to Utah?s American Indian Peoples. The archive offers tribal members, professional researchers, and patrons the opportunity to participate in Utah?s diverse and interesting history by viewing digital copies of documents, photographs, maps, and recordings and transcripts of oral histories. The collection contains sources relating to the Northwestern Shoshone, Goshute, Paiute, Utah Navajo, White Mesa, and Ute Indians to offer a wide selection of resources to educate patrons about Utah?s complex cultural past.

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“A son of the Forest” and “an intelligent son of Abraham”: Orson Hyde and Samuel Smith meet William Apess, 1832

In June 1832, Orson Hyde and Samuel H. Smith arrived in Boston, Massachusetts to preach Mormonism to the people of what was then the fourth largest city in the United States. The previous year, a young Methodist woman had traveled from Boston to Kirtland, Ohio, been baptized a Mormon, and then returned to her Massachusetts home. That woman—Vienna Jacques—had prepared several of her friends and family members for the arrival of the itinerant missionaries, and Hyde and Smith gained several converts that summer, a number of whom came from the Bromfield Street Methodist Episcopal Church, to which Jacques had belonged prior to her conversion to Mormonism.[1]