The Conversion of Parley Pratt; or, the patterns of Mormon piety
By August 23, 2009
I.
First, definitions.
(And already, you know this will be long.)
By August 23, 2009
I.
First, definitions.
(And already, you know this will be long.)
By August 23, 2009
Yesterday the newest issue of the Journal of Mormon History arrived in my mailbox. This is the first JMH issued under the editorship of Martha Taysom. This issue?s cover departs from that of nearly the last twenty years of past issues, replacing the ?abstraction of the window tracery, Salt Lake City Tenth Ward? with a section from the front page of a Finnish newspaper depicting Brigham Young (though the cover description of the window tracery remains along side the actual cover description) and trades the two-toned color scheme for a solid color. Unfortunately, the volume and issue number have been omitted from the spine, which may annoy bibliophiles, collectors, and possibly even some researchers. Perhaps this was done for space since the font is significantly larger on the spine than in past issues. Hopefully this is an oversight and the volume/issue designation will return.
By August 20, 2009
We all have different stories. And we all have different stories that led us here, reading the same blog post on Juvenile Instructor! Some of you have chosen to jot these stories down in one form or another and, thankfully, so did many of your nineteenth-century ancestors.
Life writings?autobiographies, biographies, diaries, and correspondence?captured the Victorian imagination and came to the foreground of public and private life as never before. Published autobiographies and biographies were among the best sellers of the nineteenth century.
By August 19, 2009
Please welcome our new guest blogger.
Brittany has an MA in Victorian Studies from the University of Leicester (U.K.) and BA in Humanities from BYU. She takes special interest in nineteenth-century life writings (diaries, autobiographies, correspondence) and Utah women’s history. Brittany is currently editing the life writings of Ruth May Fox, which will be published by the University of Utah Press in 2010. She works at the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City and likes to do fun stuff–especially if it involves the outdoors, travel, literature, and being with friends and fam. And Red Robin hamburgers.
By August 19, 2009
I’m looking to fill a few panels for some conferences in 2010.
1) I’m looking for a panelist for the 2010 Western History Association Conference (See the Call For Papers here). I am proposing a paper on native Mexicans (Mormons and not) in the Mormon Colonies of Chihuahua, Mexico in the 19th century. A second panelist is proposing a paper on Pancho Villa and the Mormon Colonies. A third panelist would ideally deal with some aspect of Mormonism in the US-Mexico borderlands, the Mormon Colonies, or Mormons and some other western context (the theme of the Conference is “Many Wests” which invites studies of international and non-traditional “wests”). This request is time critical as proposals are due September 1.
By August 19, 2009
In years past the Latter-day Saints were frequently referred to the suppression of the SUTTEE in India by act of the British Parliament, as a precedent and justification of certain congressional enactments?. [W]e thought perhaps a description?would be of interest to our readers. [1]
They weren?t kidding about the ?frequently.?
By August 17, 2009
Three years ago here at Claremont Graduate University (CA) we formed an LDS student group, the Claremont Mormon Studies Student Association (CMSSA). The group consists of (mostly) graduate students studying in and around the Claremont area who are interested in Mormon studies, but mainly serves as an extension of the Mormon Studies program in the School of Religion at CGU.
By August 17, 2009
A year ago, almost to the day, I found myself discussing my masters’ thesis on the role of memory and persecution in shaping Mormon identity during the 1840s and 1850s with Mary Richards, a professor of history at BYU. She mentioned wryly that she enjoyed my thesis a great deal, but that she had noted my heavy reliance on the writings of Parley P. Pratt. She suggested in a joking way that perhaps I should change my title to ?Parley Pratt’s Memory of Persecution.? I laughed along with her, but defended myself by saying that Pratt had written far more about the persecutions than anyone else. Historian Ken Winn agrees with me, arguing in his Exiles in a Land of Liberty that Pratt was the foremost Mormon commentator on the Missouri conflict (147).
By August 16, 2009
Session on Mormon Book Publishing [As always, this is not a transcript, but my imperfect, typed notes of the session which I have reworked for readability and does not presume to accurately represent the totality of the conversation.]
[Jana Riess] I came to publishing through grad school, if you think of the amount of people in academic programs and how many jobs are in academics, the extra has to go somewhere. I?m one of those. I worked for publishers weekly, book review editor. During the course of that decade, every religion book published in N. America came to my house, that was a great experience, to see what was going on in publishing across the board, major presses, evangelical publishers, small publishers.
By August 14, 2009
In my spare moments this summer, I returned to Pratt’s Autobiography just to see what would strike me. Probably because of my continuing work on Mormon theodicy, my interest in the changing Mormon conceptions of evil and the accompanying shift in apotropaic ritual, I was most interested in several passages dealing with Pratt’s view of evil in the world.
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