Juvenile Instructor - A Mormon History Blog

Review: Journals 2 and the Boggs Extradition

By David G.September 14, 2012

Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Richard Lloyd Anderson, eds., Journals, Volume 2: December 1841-April 1843 in The Joseph Smith Papers, gen. eds. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian?s Press, 2011). xl, 558 pp. Cloth: $54.95; ISBN: 978-1-60908-737-1.

On October 2, 1841, Joseph Smith deposited in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon, a first edition Doctrine and Covenants, a Bible, and other items deemed sufficiently important to preserve for future generations. Among these was a memorial to the U.S. Senate describing the Latter-day Saints’ persecutions in Missouri and a history of the persecutions published in the Times and Seasons. The addition of these two histories to a repository that included sacred writ demonstrated the degree to which the Latter-day Saints were committed to writing about their persecutions and preserving their writings for subsequent readers. As sociologist Jeffrey K. Olick has noted, “collective memory” is not a single or monolithic “thing,” but a “wide variety of mnemonic products and practices,” which only “gain reality by being used, interpreted, and reproduced or changed.”[1] Early Mormon writings on persecution, then, are best understood as mnemonic products that were gradually “used, interpreted, and reproduced” as they shaped how Mormons and others remembered the past.

Martha Hughes Cannon: Physician ? Plural Wife ? Politician

By Andrea R-MSeptember 13, 2012

The Mormon Women?s History Initiative

invites you to an evening of insights into the KUED documentary film

Guest Post: Rosemary Avance, “Why in the world would a non-Mormon study the Church, anyway?”

By Ben PSeptember 12, 2012

Rosemary Avance is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania?s Annenberg School for Communication where she studies the intersection of religion, culture, and the media. She is currently the recipient of the Eccles Mormon Studies Fellowship at the University of Utah?s Tanner Humanities Center. She is spending the year in residence in Salt Lake City, researching and writing her dissertation on modern Mormon identities.

I?m so pleased to be guest posting here at JI?one of my favorite blogs and an important source for keeping up with modern Mormon identities. My dissertation is on just that topic: how Mormons today negotiate their identities, and particularly how the internet plays a role in the articulation of various heterodoxies. I?ve been hesitant to comment or post here and elsewhere in the bloggernacle because my research tracks, in part, representations of Mormonism in real time?so contributing to those representations by offering my ?take? threatens to, essentially, muddy my data. Despite all the blogs, message boards, and Facebook pages, it turns out that Mormondom online is actually quite a small world.

But I?m pleased for the opportunity to introduce myself and my academic work, so my plan is to offer a bit of my theoretical orientation to LDS identities, explain my interest and background, and then maybe complain a bit. Because the work I?m doing is ? at the moment?incredibly frustrating.

Job Opening in BYU’s Department of Church History & Doctrine

By Ben PSeptember 11, 2012

JI’s good friend Rachel Cope passed along the news that BYU’s Church History and Doctrine Department are looking for applicants. You can find all the information you need at this site. (Click on “Search Positions” on the left-hand side of the page, then on “Job Type” click on “Full Time” for “Job Category” click “Faculty.” You will then click on the opening for Church History and Doctrine. Note: do not choose the option labeled “Professional,” unless you want to apply for a teaching position that teaches 6-7 courses per semester, each with over 100 students. The other option has a smaller teaching load with larger research expectations.) Below is the most relevant information:

Rape and Marriage in Mormon History

By AmandaSeptember 10, 2012

Note: In response to the complaints in response to Saskia?s blog post and its use of a few curse words, I feel obligated to warn readers that this post and its responses may contain some light vulgarity and adult topics. Anyone not mature enough to handle such language or topics should not read the post.

A few weeks ago, I went to a conference on Mormon women held at the University of Utah. The room was filled with elderly feminists who had advocated for a more liberal Mormon view of women in the 1980s, middle-aged women who had commandeered their husbands into watching the kids for a few hours, and graduate students dressed in jeans and t-shirts. The panels were varied but held together by a common focus on Mormon women and a desire to make some sort-of change in the way that women are treated in a church that privileges male experience and male members. One of the presentations that was particularly poignant was Jennifer Finlayson-Fife?s presentation on the sexuality of Mormon women. She described the difficulty created by expectations that young women be sexually attractive and chaste at the same. When unwanted sexual intimacy occurs, Mormon girls are stuck between allowing him to continue, risking their purity and standing before God, and saying ?no? and losing his interest. As a result, many Mormon women feel guilty for sexual contact they neither wanted nor consented to.

Announcement: John Turner’s Utah Tour this Week

By ChristopherSeptember 10, 2012

For our Utah readers, friend of JI and author of the recently-released Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet John Turner will be speaking about his book at locations along the Wasatch Front. If you’re around, be sure and make it a point to attend. Here’s the schedule:

Review: Anne Hyde’s Empires, Nations, and Families

By David G.September 9, 2012

Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860, by Anne F. Hyde. History of the American West Series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. xiii-xv, 628 pp.

The great project of turning the West into part of the United States, initiated in 1803 and begun in earnest in the 1840s, had made little progress in many places. Much remained flexible and contingent about life on its complex border into the second half of the nineteenth century. Residents of the West seemed quite ambivalent about nationality, easily claiming new citizenship when it served personal or business needs. During a time when no one knew which nation or empire would finally impose control, effective trade was the sole source of power. And it continued to be a world defined by personal connections. (30)

So argues Anne Hyde, Professor of History at Colorado College, in Empires, Nations, and Families, winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize earlier this year.

Negotiation on the Internet: the Mormon Hey Girl Meme

By Mees TielensSeptember 7, 2012

Memes are an obligatory part of the internet. They?re eagerly shared through Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and other on-line social media sites. They occasionally make it off-line, finding their way onto someone?s cubicle wall or refrigerator door. And I bet most people have had their mom innocently forward them a meme or two, most likely featuring a cat. Memes are everywhere.

lolcats, or I can has cheeseburger? http://icanhas.cheezburger.com/

Rehearsing for American Citizenship: Thomas Simpson on “The Death of Mormon Separatism in American Universities, 1877-1896”

By ChristopherSeptember 6, 2012

The latest issue of Religion and American Culture arrived in the mail several weeks ago, and swamped with a thousand other things to read, I tossed it on my bedside table and promptly forgot about it. While cleaning in preparation for the arrival of visitors last weekend, I pulled the issue out from under a stack of library books and scattered, semi-coherent dissertation notes I scribbled down in the middle of the night while laying in bed and quickly glanced at the table of contents. I was pleasantly surprised to see an article on Mormonism, and even more pleased when I saw that Thomas Simpson was the author.

Patrick Mason’s “Mormon Social Ethics” in Christian Century

By Ben PSeptember 5, 2012

In the August 22nd issue of Christian Century, there was a plethora of pieces on Mormonism due to Mitt Romney’s official nomination as the GOP presidential candidate. Most saw, read, and praised the thoughtful piece by Kathleen Flake on Mormonism’s scriptural canon. Others were somewhat bemused with Richard Bushman’s list of “essential books on Mormonism” (which I personally found somewhat puzzling). But there were also pieces behind the CC’s paywall that deserve attention: Ed Blum’s incisive review of Gutjahr’s The Book of Mormon: A Biography, and a very nuanced and important essay by Patrick Mason on “Visions of Zion: Changes in Mormon Social Ethics.” Not only is it great to see the CC spend so much time on Mormons, but even better to see them give the space to thoughtful and leading scholars in the field. Since many here probably don’t subscribe to the magazine, I thought I would gist Mason’s thoughtful piece.

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