Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Grants (Due 3/15)

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The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies is pleased to announce multiple awards for 2021 that are available for scholars, students, or organizations conducting research or producing public programming related to the Intermountain regions of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, or Wyoming. Applications for 2021 are due by 11:59 p.m. MST on March 15, and awardees will be notified by May 1. 

Click Here To Apply: In the midst of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on travel and other activities, many categories request explicit details on how these may impact your project, whether there are contingency plans to work amidst restrictions or if project progress would require delay until restrictions are lifted. Awards and funding opportunities are divided into categories for students, faculty, independent researchers, and public institutions. 

2021 Awards and Funding from the BYU Charles Redd Center for Western Studies

Applications are due March 15, 2021.The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies is pleased to announce multiple awards for 2021 that are available for scholars, students, or organizations conducting research or producing public programming related to the Intermountain regions of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, or Wyoming. Applications for 2021 are due by 11:59 p.m. MST on March 15, and awardees will be notified by May 1.

GO TO THEIR WEBSITE TO APPLY!

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Joseph Smith Papers Conference Call for Papers 2021

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To commemorate the upcoming completion of the Revelations and Translations series, which includes the breadth of Joseph Smith’s revelation and translation projects, the Joseph Smith Papers Project will host the fifth annual Joseph Smith Papers Conference on September 10, 2021. The conference will be broadcast digitally to allow for both local and global participation from presenters and audience members. (This was also the format of the 2020 conference.) The theme for this year’s conference is “Joseph Smith and Sacred Text in Nineteenth-Century America.”

Over the course of his life, Joseph Smith engaged in several translation projects, including the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, and the Bible revision, and he dictated numerous revelations that were published in church newspapers and print volumes. Scribes, clerks, and editors worked with Smith in these projects. Through these endeavors, he introduced his followers to new sacred texts, sought to restore and clarify doctrine, modified biblical scripture, and voiced authoritative direction from God, shaping the Latter-day Saints’ understanding of their past, present, and future. To the Saints, Joseph Smith’s translations and revelations testified of his unique prophetic role.

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Call for Submissions: Special Issue of *RELIGIONS* on Latter-day Saint Theology and the Environment

George Handley, Kristen Blair, and Anna Thurston are guest editing a special issue of Religions! See the information below for more on possible topics and how to submit. Flyer HERE.

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Call for Nominations: John Whitmer Historical Association 2021 Awards

Thanks to friend-of-JI Katherine Pollock for passing this on!

This is a call for nominations for the John Whitmer Historical Association 2021 Awards!

We welcome nominations from historians, publishers, and all supporters of Mormon history for the best works published in 2020.

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The Deseret News took a cheap shot at a Latter-day Saint Historian. Here’s what it got wrong.

Writing in the Deseret News this morning, my BYU colleague Hal Boyd offered his personal assessment of journalist McKay Coppins’s feature on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ history and the author’s own experience of the faith in The Atlantic. In evaluating the piece, Boyd reduces features on Latter-day Saints and Mormon history to three genres: “non-Latter-day Saint journalist[s] who look at the faith warily,” “pieces written by former or lapsed members of the church who revisit their past faith with equal parts exoticism and redemptive nostalgia,” and a third group he classifies as “active church members [who] examine their faith.” Boyd accuses this last group of “tak[ing] special pains to demonstrate just how objective they are in a well-intentioned but ultimately gauche bid to convince readers that they’re playing it straight,” or what Boyd dismissively calls “performative objectivity.” Straining to find examples, he points to two pieces: a 2005 Newsweek article and, curiously, our own Benjamin Park’s 2020 book, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier.

If it seems strange to include a book about Latter-day Saint history written by an academically-trained historian in an article about journalistic assessments of Mormonism, that’s because it is. Such an inclusion betrays an unfortunate misunderstanding of historical scholarship. And make no mistake — though Ben’s book is written for an audience beyond his academic peers, it is still very much historical scholarship, representing years of archival research, rounds of editing and peer review, and a commitment to not just telling a story, but making a historical argument.

Where Boyd sees “a gauche bid” at “performative objectivity,” other readers will (rightfully) see that very commitment on full display. The Kingdom of Nauvoo aims not only to tell a fascinating story but to demonstrate what the Mormon sojourn in Nauvoo tells us about early America, writ large. And whereas journalists from all of the camps proposed by Boyd have largely agreed that Mormonism is, as the title of Coppins’s piece puts it, “the most American religion,” Park’s argument is more subtle and interesting: Joseph Smith and his followers, he agrees, are best understood as a product of their time and place — the early nineteenth century American republic, a place of religious revivals, rapid change, and a faith in the future of the American experiment. But they also represented a distinct challenge to that republic and to that civic-minded optimism. More significantly — and this is Park’s real contribution — Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo were an affront to “the foundations of American democracy” (9).

Frustrated with the failure of local and national governments to protect their rights as American citizens from mob rule, Saints took matters into their own hands. Park describes in detail the Mormon formation of a local militia, the organization and activity of both ecclesiastical and civil courts, the provocative city charter drawn up for Nauvoo, and the bloc voting that continually frustrated non-Mormon politicians. Most radically of all, Joseph Smith and a group of his most trusted followers began making plans during this time for a theocratic government that would triumph over the failed democracy of the United States (along with all other world governments).

All of this took place against the backdrop of rapid revelation and change within the Latter-day Saint community. Smith and others began taking plural wives, challenging American conceptions of the Christian family and provoking dissent from otherwise committed followers. If this seems sensationalistic, it’s because the subject matter is sensational. It makes for gripping reading. That’s not Park trying to “play it straight” to appease non-Mormon readers; it’s him offering a close reading of the historical sources. As a historian does.

Some may quibble with Park’s conclusions. That’s good and fine. But the sources on which those conclusions are based are listed in 31 pages of detailed endnotes citing each document and archive by name, along with each earlier scholarly interpretation Park’s book builds on and revises. If the Deseret News, or any other outlet, wants to critique the book, it should start by assessing the book on its own aims — its reading of sources and its interpretation of them. That is how history works.

Job Ad: Internship with LDS Church History Department

UNITED STATES |  UT-Salt Lake City

ID 277158, Type: Temporary Part-Time

POSTING INFO

Posting Dates: 12/14/2020 – 12/28/2020

Job Family: Human Resources

Department: Church History Department

PURPOSES

This successful applicant will work with the full-time staff of the Historic Sites Division of the Church History Department to research and write interpretive guides and historical reports regarding the sacred places of the restoration. The Intern will also assist with other projects, as needed. This is an exciting and unique opportunity for someone interested in Church history and for those pursuing a career in the history field. We are looking for a motivated and hardworking self-started to join our team!

This is a paid internship, which is anticipated to last one year (12 months). This position is a part-time (approximately 28 hours per week) hourly, nonexempt position. The candidate must be currently enrolled in, or recently graduated from (within the last 12 months), an undergraduate or graduate degree program.

RESPONSIBILITIES

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Searching for sources in digitized archives

First off, I think that it is extremely important to grind through primary sources. You really can’t replace the experience of slowly reading a minute book or a journal cover to cover. There are insights, questions, and observations that will not arise in any other way. That being said, technology allows for research that would not otherwise be possible. Here I’m going to review the state of one particular art, in the form of a case study.

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Review: Anthony Sweat, Repicturing the Restoration (BYU Religious Studies Center, 2020)

Because Repicturing the Restoration is primarily aimed at Latter-day Saint students, this review shades towards devotional uses rather than academic purposes. If that’s not your cup of postem, this may not be the review for you.

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2021: Forthcoming Books in Mormon history and Mormon studies

2021 looks to be a bumper year for Mormon history and Mormon studies! Start your budgeting now.

Church Historian’s Press

David W. Grua, Brent M. Rogers, Matthew C. Godfrey, Robin Scott Jensen, Christopher James Blythe, and Jessica M. Nelson, Documents, Volume 12: March–July 1843 (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2021).

Royal Skousen and Robin Scott Jensen, eds., Revelations and Translations, Volume 5: Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2021).

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