In defense of the Pew survey: a recap
By July 2, 2008
This is, quite simply, the single most extensive canvass of American religious life ever achieved.
By July 2, 2008
This is, quite simply, the single most extensive canvass of American religious life ever achieved.
By July 2, 2008
Literary scholar Lawrence Buell, in his excellent New England Literary Culture, explored one of the most important ideas related to the antebellum Romantic thinkers–an idea that he defines as “literary scripturism.”
By July 1, 2008
Admin: Janiece (or JJ as we like to call her), is a PhD student at the University of Utah where her she is completing dissertation work in part on the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
In It Does Not Die, Maitreyi Devi wrote a “she said” to Mircea Elidae’s Bengal Nights, the “he said” semi-autobiographical account of his time in 1930s Calcutta and his relationship with Devi.[1] Unsurprisingly, Devi offered a very different version of events in her narrative. Academia (and even Oprah thanks to James Frey) has long debated the definition of memoir and its highly subjective nature. A comparison of It Does Not Die and Bengal Nights provides many aspects for analysis of events personally subjective and emotive while grounded in history. Can scholarship ever overcome personal opinion or reaction in highly emotionally charged historical events?
By June 30, 2008
Bruce Jorgensen is looking for submissions for this year’s Mormon Letters session at RMMLA-a great opportunity to present at a conference, especially for anyone doing stuff in Mormon literature or film. I’ve posted Jorgensen’s CFP and submission details below:
By June 30, 2008
We at the JI are honored to host the esteemable Janiece Johnson for the next couple of weeks.
In her own words, Janiece’s biography relevant to this blog can be measured out in “BYU, BYU, Vandy, the U,” corresponding roughly to “poli-sci, history, theology, history.” She’s currently PhD’ing in the University of Utah’s history department and writing a dissertation that will resolve everybody’s questions about the Mountain Meadows Massacre in a satisfying and logical way. If we are all particularly lucky, perhaps she will have something further to say about that.
Welcome, Janiece!
By June 30, 2008
Please welcome out latest grad student acquisition, Edje, who after two weeks of guestblogging is now joining us permanently. See here for his bio.
By June 30, 2008
Thank goodness for laptops and wireless internet. For this post I had to dress my young, whippersnapping self as a black stew-pot and climb onto a very high horse. Balancing a desktop would have been nigh impossible, especially with all the kettles watching. This pot is stewing a rant (with a soupçon of rave) on some basic number sense
By June 28, 2008
Tradition has it that Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, co-founder of the well-known Theosophical Society, had wanted to travel to Nauvoo to see the Mormons but was unable to do so due to their expulsion from the state of Illinois shortly before she arrived in the U.S. [1]. Though such a visit unfortunately never materialized (it could have been an encounter to rival Joseph Smith’s interview with the prophet Matthias in its historical delectability), tradition also has it that she did pass through Salt Lake City in the early 1850s,
By June 27, 2008
No time for a real post dealing with the martyrdom today, but here’s ERS’s memorial of Joseph Smith’s death.
By June 25, 2008
Introduction
Last year, Ronan posted a bit called “Making Adjustments” at By Common Consent (here, with useful comments all the way to the end) that hashed out some of the issues with and hermeneutical strategies for bringing together revealed and scholarly understandings. (See also: Joel’s post from Friday.) The Gold Plates’ putative chemical composition provides an example of revealed-subsequently canonized-language “adjusting.” [1] Joseph Smith-History 1:34, quotes Moroni, an angel, as saying “there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent.” Does “gold” mean “100% pure, elemental gold,” a gold-based alloy, or a color? [2] How much could such plates plausibly weigh?
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