Mormonism in Cultural Context: A Special Journal of Mormon History Issue in Honor of Richard Bushman

The last few years have been a coronation of sorts for Richard Bushman–and rightfully so. After a prolific and prestigious career, the American Historical Association devoted a session to his work, the Mormon History Association distinguished him with their Leonard Arrington Award, and a group of former students held a conference in his honor. (I wrote my reflections of the conference here.) The most recent issue of Journal of Mormon History includes many of the papers presented at that last conference, including several JIers. I just finished the entire issue last weekend, and concluded it was probably the strongest JMH issue in years, as nearly every article was at an exceptionally high level of academic standards.

(It should be noted, however, that the issue as a whole was strong in a few very, very narrow fields: Joseph Smith’s thought, Mormonism and political thought, and historical thought in general. See a pattern? Now this is primarily the result of the participants’ building off of Richard Bushman’s own work–a commemorative issue in honor of Jill Derr would probably look much different, for instance–so the lack of engagement with the 20th century, material culture, lived religion, or, gasp, women’s history can, at least partially, be overlooked. But since these themes tend to dominate Mormon history in general, I maintain the “partially” qualifier.)

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Southwestern States Mission: The Report Book

Missionaries sent a report to mission administrators every week. In theory, conference secretaries mailed instructions to each companionship Thursday evenings, which the Elders retrieved Mondays when they sent their weekly reports. [1] Below are photos of the report books of Elder Calvin H Chandler, who served in the Southwestern States Mission from 1899 to 1901. [2]

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Introducing: Dictionary of Mormon Biography

I want to start off this post by thanking you for your kindness since my first post. The feedback and general excitement I received via comments and email was palpable and kind of amazing.

The announcement I am now making is closely related to my work on the Saints of Alberta Project (SAP), which is still taking shape thanks to your comments. The Dictionary of Mormon Biography (DMB) is a new site, which will shortly become a platform like unto a Wikipedia, for Mormon biography. Currently, the site is a mockup of the kind of database I’d like to and am assembling though the next iteration will run on a similar software to Wikipedia: Semantic Mediawiki.

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Full Text of Elder Marlin K. Jensen’s The Rest of the Story: Latter-day Saint Relations with Utah’s Native Americans in the Latest MHS

The most recent issue of Mormon Historical Studies arrived in the mail today (Fall 2011, 12:2). I was thrilled to see that one of the essays included is Elder Marlin K. Jensen’s July 24, 2010 Sons of the Utah Pioneers Sunrise Service lecture which we drew attention to here nearly two years ago (also, see David G.’s related post about Remembering and Forgetting Utah’s Indian Wars).  At the time, many expressed a hope that his remarks would be published in full, and thanks to Mormon Historical Studies, that hope is reality. I will be providing a longer review of the issue in the next few days, but I wanted to note the inclusion of this talk and provide this excerpt which is given under a bolded heading:

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MHA recap at Religion in American West blog

I posted a very brief recap of MHA, focused primarily on David Marshall’s Tanner lecture, over at the Religion in the American West blog. Please feel free to go read it and leave some feedback (there and here). For those who were there, what were some highlights from the conference that I missed in my (very, very brief) recap’ What did you think about Marshall’s Tanner lecture? Agree? Disagree? with his overall thesis or finer points in his presentation? (Did I represent his argument okay?) Please, chime in!

O Canada!

In keeping with a family tradition that we began last year in St. George, Utah, we turned MHA (the Mormon History Association annual meeting), which was held in Calgary this year, into an excuse for a very big (9,000+-mile) family road trip this year. In preparation for our border-crossing, I read a short story by author and English professor Thomas King titled “Borders” (if you haven’t read it, check it out). It is a story about a Blackfoot woman and her son (told from the perspective of the adolescent son) who get stranded at the U.S.-Canadian border–in Blackfoot Territory–when the mother insists that her nationality is Blackfoot and refuses to specify whether she is from the Canadian or American side: she is from the Blackfoot side. The two are on their way to Salt Lake City to visit the woman’s daughter who had previously moved there, convinced by a friend that it is the greatest place on earth, which the daughter reiterates in her postcards and travel brochures sent home (though, upon their arrival, she admits that she is thinking of returning home). Though never directly or explicitly so, the story is an excellent study in the complex mingling of Canadian-American-Blackfoot-Mormon identities that combine and comingle for several individuals in the area often referred to, among others things, as southern Alberta.

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Marjorie Newton’s “Tiki and Temple” Review

Newton, Marjorie. Tiki and Temple: The Mormon Mission in New Zealand, 1854?1958. Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2012. Paperback. 343 pages. ISBN: 978-1-58958-1210. $ 29.95.

Note:  The term Pakeha refers to the white settler population of New Zealand, while the Maori are the islands’ indigenous peoples.

Tucked in the back of Marjorie Newton?s Tiki and Temple is a Maori glossary.  It is possible to read and understand her work without referring to it to discover that a mihi is a greeting or welcoming ceremony or that quarterly conferences were called hui pariha in the Mormon Church in New Zealand.  The glossary?s existence, however, is evidence of Newton?s commitment to writing a history of the Mormon Church in New Zealand that recognizes the contributions of indigenous Maori culture to the church and is meticulous in its detail.  Newton also carefully reconstructs the lives of early Pakeha converts to the church.  As I read Of Tiki and Temple, I was consistently impressed with her careful research and attention-to-detail.  Newton has written the most comprehensive history of the Mormon Church in New Zealand and her work should serve as an example on how to write an engaging local history.

Newton begins her book with William Phelps? description of the Maori people in The Evening and the Morning Star in which he rhapsodized

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Southwestern States Mission: Preaching about Authority

The missionaries addressed several different topics in their preaching, but if there was a pattern or sequence, I have not yet found it. ?Authority? was a relatively frequent subject of preaching, discussion, and disputation. [1]

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Alberta Saints and Digital Ephemera

I have been a student of Mormon history for over a decade now and have also been an active participant of the Web since I was a young man. I rolled with the revolutions of HTML, GIFs, Flash, web standards, and ?HTML5? more recently. These two worlds, Mormon history and the Web, have increasingly been gravitating toward and colliding into each other, inevitably spilling out new galaxies of information [1]. This makes me a chipper boy in the 21st century, an age of expanding data, information, knowledge, and wisdom.

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JI goes Digital Humanities; or, introducing new guest blogger Tod Robbins

We’re thrilled to introduce our latest guest blogger: long-time reader, digital humanist, and (as of last month) Master of Library and Information Science, Tod Robbins. Here’s how Tod introduces himself:

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