Q&A with Taylor Petrey, editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought

Dr. Taylor Petrey was recently named editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. We are grateful he took time to answer our questions!

Taylor Petrey is Associate Professor and Religion and Chair of the Religion Department at Kalamazoo College. Dr. Petrey received his ThD and MTS from Harvard Divinity School in New Testament and Early Christianity and BA from Pace University in Philosophy and Religious Studies. He teaches courses in ancient Christianity and ancient Judaism, including the sacred texts that comprise the Bible for both traditions.  His teaching and research explore the use and meaning of the Bible, early Christian thought, and the history of gender, sexuality, and kinship in Christianity.

• What is your vision for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought?

Dialogue is a hub for Mormon Studies scholarship, events, and news. For over 50 years, Dialogue has been the premiere journal in Mormon Studies. It has published some of the most important articles, personal essays, poetry, fiction, and art. Dialogue has also evolved in recent years to offer new products. We have an excellent newsletter, podcast, and social media feeds on Facebook and Twitter. These forms of engagement give our audience more ways to access great commentary on the past, present, and future of the LDS tradition.

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The Mechanics of Applying to MHA: The CFP, Writing Abstracts, and Forming Panels

It’s hard to believe that we are only a few weeks away from the Mormon History Association conference deadline! Anne Berryhill, our committee, and I are anxiously awaiting when we get to look at proposals and fully plan out the 2020 conference. I suspect that I’m preaching to the choir when I tell blog readers that MHA is one of the best conferences out there. It’s well-attended, features fantastic scholarship, and I always walk away feeling academically rejuvenated. As Ben once wrote, one of the best things about MHA is that people show up to panels. Many conferences have low session turnout, but that’s an exception rather than the rule at MHA. I remember the first time I presented at a national conference of another organization and feeling disappointed that only a dozen people attended my paper. Accordingly, the Q&A portions are also rich and engaging (although, like all conferences, there can be some wacky questions!).

So how do you get to the point where you’re presenting at MHA? How do you submit a paper proposal? And, ideally, how do you submit a panel proposal? Like many things in academia, folks are often told to do something but specific processes are not fully explained. In this post, I hope to make the process less opaque. I will explain why you should submit to the MHA Annual Conference, how to “read” a Call for Papers, how to write a good abstract, how to write a paper proposal, and how to write a panel proposal. The process isn’t complicated, but I remember well not feeling confident about sending in a proposal.

Important Consideration

This is important to put at the beginning of the post: not everyone is accepted to every conference to which they apply. I remember receiving a rejection letter from MHA and wondering if that was the end of my academic career. Thankfully, wise mentors like Ken Alford and Spencer Fluhman told me that receiving a rejection is a part of the process. Sometimes a proposal doesn’t “fit” with the program. “Fit” is a nebulous term, but it’s a complicated process to balance a conference lineup with a variety of topics, themes, formats, and so on. A rejection says nothing about your intellectual capabilities or your place in the field of Mormon history. Everyone from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich to the least-experienced undergraduate will face rejection in their scholarly career.

Why Should I Submit to the Mormon History Association Conference?

Conference participation is the lowest bar-to-entry into the scholarly world (Ardis Parshall has written about MHA being “academic vs. scholarly” here). There is room for dozens of speakers at MHA’s annual conference, for instance, versus roughly 20 articles published per year in the Journal of Mormon History. Conferences give you a chance to show off your research, meet with others who are interested in Mormon history, and make connections with others.

MHA is the friendliest conference I’ve ever attended. It’s a collegial environment with smart people who know the field. You couldn’t ask for a better place to receive feedback on your work and sharpen your future research and writing questions.

How Do I “Read” the Call for Papers?

First, take a look at the Call for Papers or CFP. You can pull out important information from a relatively short document (most important details in bold).

• “The 55th Annual Conference of the Mormon History Association will be held June 4-7, 2020, in Rochester/Palmyra, New York.”
  • Make sure you can attend the conference!
• “The 2020 conference theme, “Visions, Restoration, and Movements” commemorates the 200th anniversary of Mormonism’s birth in upstate New York. Joseph Smith’s religious movement has grown from a fledgling frontier faith to a diverse set of religious and cultural traditions functioning across the globe.
  • Having a paper that addresses the theme in some way, and/or that addresses the 200^th anniversary will fit in with the conference committee’s vision for the program.
• The Rochester/Palmyra conference will be an opportunity to walk where Joseph Smith, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, and other such luminaries walked, a place to be reminded of the visions, visionaries, and movements that came out of western New York in the 19th century.
  • Papers that address secondary themes like suffrage and abolition are likely to score well when the program committee reads your abstract.
• Though the program committee will consider individual papers, it will give preference to proposals for complete sessions, whose participants reflect MHA’s ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusion.
  • It’s easier to be accepted as a panel than as individual papers. Having women, people of color, and folks from disparate institutions reflects well on your panel for several reasons. First, it shows that you worked to find a panel that fits well together. Second, the panel will address different topics or themes according to different researcher’s questions.
• Please send 1) a 300-word abstract for each paper or presentation and 2) a one-page CV for each presenter, including email contact information. Full session proposals should include the session title and a 150-word abstract outlining the session’s theme, along with a confirmed chair and/or commentator, if applicable. Previously published papers are not eligible for presentation at MHA.  Limited financial assistance for travel and lodging at the conference is available to volunteers, and to some student and international presenters. Those who wish to apply for this funding may do so upon acceptance of their proposed presentation.
• The deadline for proposals is November 1, 2019. Send proposals to program co-chairs Joseph Stuart and Anne Berryhill at mharochester2020@gmail.com. Acknowledgment of receipt will be sent immediately. Notification of acceptance/rejection will be made by January 15, 2020.
  • Make sure you follow directions! Write your abstract(s), include a CV, and list chairs and commentators.
  • If applicable, be sure to apply for travel funding if your paper/panel is accepted (the program committee and MHA’s executive director won’t know how funding will work until after the committee is set).
  • Hit your deadlines!
  • Don’t expect to hear back from MHA until January 15, 2020. If you haven’t heard by January 16, 2020, THEN send a note to the panel co-chairs’ email.

How Do I Write a Quality Abstract?

Using the information above, you can now craft your abstract, meaning your proposal with tentative ideas about your findings. You don’t have to have your paper complete before submitting; you’ll have time to write it afterward. Still, you should have a solid hypothesis for what you expect to find in your archival research and perusal of the secondary literature.

Remember that you only have 20 minutes to present. Focus in one a single idea that you hope to develop and explain to your audience. Here’s one way to go about it (and here’s an example of mine from a previous MHA conference):

• Set the scene (who, what, when, where, why)
• Briefly explain what others have said about your topic (if they have said anything)
• “Based on [primary sources, data, etc.]” or “through an analysis of [events, persons, ideas]” I will show [argument].
• Ask a friend, mentor, or colleague to take a look at your proposal to make sure that it’s clear and concise.

How Do I Submit a Paper Proposal?

Write your abstract and send to mharochester2020@gmail.com by 11:59 PM on November 1, 2019. You’ll receive confirmation that the committee received it—if you haven’t received one send a follow up!

How Do I Form a Panel?

This can be especially daunting for new scholars or those who haven’t previously attended MHA. You can find those who have published in your area of interest at mormonhistory.byu.edu using a search term like “Japan” or “Book of Mormon” or “Civil War.” You can also consult womeninmormonstudies.org or globalmormonstudies.org to find others to team up with. Finally, this Google Doc lists the names of those looking for panelists with their topics and how many panelists they need and has their best mode of contact included.

Most people are flattered to be asked to join a panel. If they are rude then you didn’t want to present with them, anyway.

How Do I Submit a Panel Proposal?

Compile abstracts, cvs, and other relevant information and send to mharochester2020@gmail.com by 11:59 PM on November 1, 2019. You’ll receive confirmation that the committee received it—if you haven’t received one send a follow up. Also, be sure to actually contact your chair or commentator and confirm they can take on the role. Don’t put people forward for work they haven’t agreed to do!

Other Resources to Consult:

North Carolina State’s “Tips for Writing Conference Proposals”

Ben P’s “Proposing Panels for MHA’s Annual Conference: A Few Thoughts”

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Mormon Pacific Historical Society Conferences

The 2019 conference of the Mormon Pacific Historical Society will focus on the history of the building of temples in the Pacific by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, starting with the Laie Hawaii Temple in 1919–100 years ago.  Approximately 30 presentations–5 choices per hour to choose from!  Registration begins at 8 A.M. on November 16, 2019, in the Heber J. Grant Building.

CALL FOR APPLICANTS—2020 Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar

The 7th Annual Summer Seminar on Latter-day Saint Theology
“A Wrestle Before God: Reading Enos 1”
Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Bordeaux, France
June 22–July 4, 2020

Sponsored by the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar in partnership with The Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies, The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, and the Wheatley Institution

In the summer of 2020, the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar will sponsor a summer seminar for graduate students and faculty devoted to reading Enos 1. The seminar will be hosted by the Université Bordeaux Montaigne in Bordeaux, France, from June 22 through July 4, 2020. Travel arrangements, housing, and a $1250 stipend will be provided for admitted participants. The seminar will be led by Adam Miller and Joseph Spencer, directors of the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar.

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Upcoming Events and Lectures Oct 10-18, 2019

Here are details on a few events over the next couple weeks in Provo and Salt Lake City.

“Saints, and Other Western Wonders”

Date: Thursday, Oct 10, 2019

Time: 11 am

Location: Karl G. Maeser Building Auditorium, Brigham Young University

Dr. David Walker will draw from his new book, Railroad Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West and discuss how the transcontinental railroad era mainlined the church. You can find more details here.

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Church History Library Digital Asset Processing Internship

POSTING INFO

Posting Dates: 10/07/2019 – 10/21/2019

Job Family: Human Resources

Department: Church History Department

PURPOSES

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church History Library has established a process to digitize, describe, and provide online access to as many of its holdings as possible. Using metadata from paper and electronic indices, spreadsheets, and other files, we are attempting to identify people, places and events in the over twelve million pages of digitized published materials and archival collections. The Library is seeking a part-time (28 hrs/wk) intern to help transform and create this metadata, and to train volunteers involved in the digital asset identification process. We invite students or recent (within last 12 months) college graduates with career goals in the field of metadata and/or digital asset management to apply for this 1-year, paid internship.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Learn how to use the Church History Library’s metadata enrichment tools.
• Train volunteers how to use the Library’s metadata enrichment tools.
• Assign and review volunteer metadata enrichment work.
• Reconcile and resolve problems or exceptions encountered in this process.
• Create and enhance training documentation for metadata projects.
• Consult on improving metadata enrichment tools and processes.
• Normalize and transform existing metadata in spreadsheets and other electronic documents.
• Participate with other library, archival, and product management professionals in improving library services.
• Improve professional skills relating to library, archives, and digital asset management.
• Improve personal knowledge of Church history.

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A Quick Note: Historicizing the Role of Bishoprics

The history of Bishops and their responsibilities throughout the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has yet to be written. Historicizing the shifts in responsibility at the October 2019 General Conference of the church can consequently be challenging. I’d like to focus here on one key facet of the new ecclesiology: the role of Bishoprics with young men of the church.

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Q&A with Christopher Blythe

An excerpt from an interview with Christopher Blythe, a Research Associate at BYU’s Maxwell Institute working on a book about the cultural history of Book of Mormon geography. Blythe received his PhD in American Religious History in 2015 and has worked on the Joseph Smith Papers. He is also the associate editor for the Journal of Mormon History. For the full interview, head over to Kurt Manwaring’s site, From the Desk.

How did your understanding of Joseph Smith change during your time as a documentary editor for the Joseph Smith Papers?

My thoughts on Joseph Smith as a prophet and visionary are much the same as they have been from when I first read Joseph Fielding Smith’s Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon Cook’s Words of Joseph Smith as a teenager. I’m enthralled and moved by Joseph’s vision for mankind and his theology of the divine.

As a documentary editor for the Joseph Smith Papers, I became acquainted with Joseph not only as a prophetic figure but as a political leader and businessman as well.

I was surprised to learn just how involved he was in real estate, local politics, and business. This can be disorienting for someone who is only aware of Joseph Smith’s prophetic ministry, but, for Joseph, this was all wrapped up in his vision of building the Kingdom of God on earth.

What are a few of the most pressing issues in American Religious History today?

I think matters of race have moved to the center of conversations on religious studies in the United States.  There is also extensive work being done on the role of scripture in American churches, what is termed “scripturalization” – how texts or ideas become sacralized within a community. Since the 1990s, and at the center of my own research, is an ongoing effort to bring out the lived experience of ordinary believers. Religious intolerance remains a crucial discussion in American religious history as well. Increasingly we have Latter-day Saint scholars and Latter-day Saint subjects integrated into these wider studies, whether it be race, scripture, or religious prejudice.

What are two or three breathtaking documents you have personally handled in the Church History Library archives?

As a historian on the Joseph Smith Papers, we would check typescripts against the original manuscript, so I have had the opportunity to work with many documents that were handled by Joseph Smith and other early church leaders.  I have a special place in my heart for a little booklet from 1840 that Wilford Woodruff used to record Joseph Smith’s teachings. He included revelations that weren’t yet canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants and in a few instances, notes about more private interactions with the prophet. The document was re-discovered in the past several years in the Church’s holdings and was made available digitally about two years ago. It includes esoteric beliefs—speculative ideas—that Joseph would never discuss publicly, but which he felt comfortable discussing with his closest friends. 

Guest Post – Mormonism and Book History: A Search for Sources

Tyler Balli is a master’s student in history at Virginia Tech working on a thesis project that intersects at the history of Mormonism and the history of the book. He can be contacted at tylerab AT vt.edu.

In August of 1877, seventeen-year-old Annie Wells confided to her diary about the “splendid novel” she was then reading, Marquis of Lossie. She wrote, “I never read a good novel, with out I [feel] allmost [sic] jealous of my heroine, and even now I keep building castles in the air about this book only putting my self in as the heroine.” She even composed a poem about her reading experience:

Who ever read the daring deed;

Of some great hero,

Who rode upon his flashing steed

As brave as any hero

Without a thought of admiration

A longing for such a one they feel

And when they close the splendid volume

They recognize their beau-ideal

Concluding her entry, she writes, “Really not a very excellent poet am I, but then that expresses my opinion and no one else need read it.”[1]

Wells’s frank admissions of reading a romantic novel written by a non-Mormon, as well as her fantasies of becoming the novel’s heroine, would have alarmed many church leaders, editors, and other cultural arbiters of the day. Many of them often warned against the dangers of fiction, which could give readers “false ideas about human nature” or inspire “poor, weak-headed creatures . . . [to] assume the character of [a novel’s] heroine, until it passes from recollection, or is superseded by another heroine of a novel read subsequently,” never allowing them to develop their true selves.[2] These are just a few of the ideas about proper or improper reading that swirled around in nineteenth-century Utah, of which ideas about fiction only composed a small part.

I’m interested in uncovering more sources like Wells’s journal. I’m currently a master’s student in history at Virginia Tech working on a thesis project that intersects at the history of Mormonism and the history of the book, and I’d greatly appreciate the help of my fellow scholars in suggesting sources.

I’m specifically interested in looking at Mormon readers from 1869 till the turn of the century: what they read (both secular and religious publications, fiction and nonfiction), how they read, their reactions to reading, how they navigated the contemporary proscriptions and prescriptions of reading, and how reading helped them make sense of the tumultuous transformations going on during this period. I’d like to look at this through the lens of gender as well.

If you have come across a primary source that sheds light on any of these topics, I would greatly appreciate you pointing me toward it. Since comments about reading material and reactions to it are often spread widely across letters, journals, or other places, I won’t be able to scan them all, and I’d greatly appreciate your help if you’ve spotted something.

[1] Annie Wells Cannon, journal, 1877 Jun 30–1881 Sep 4, typescript, MSS 2307, box 2, folder 7, pp. 7–8, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Provo, UT.

[2] “What We Women Do with Our Time,” Woman’s Exponent, February 1, 1878, 132; O. F. Whitney, “The Way to Be Great,” Contributor, April 1880, 158–160.

Q&A with Richard Bennett

Kurt Manwaring published an interview with Richard Bennett at his site, From the Desk, discussing Bennett’s most recent book Temples Rising: A Heritage of Sacrifice (2019, Deseret Book).

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