I have recently become the director of the Rocky Mountain American Religion Seminar (RMARS) at the University of Utah. As director, one of my jobs is to invite scholars to deliver public lectures at the University of Utah. Our first lecture will be delivered by Professor Kathryn Gin Lum of Stanford University. Her lecture will be held on Monday, October 16 at 2 PM in CTIHB 101 (University of Utah).

She will speak on the confluence of race, religion, and the “heathen” in American history. You can RSVP (and help spread the word) on Facebook.

Professor Gin Lum?s first book, Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2014), asks how widespread belief in hell influenced Americans? perceptions of themselves and the rest of the world in the first century of nationhood. Her second book project, a co-edited volume (with Paul Harvey), is The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2018). She is currently working on a third book, tentatively titled The Heathen World and America?s Humanitarian Impulse, under contract with Harvard University Press.

If you are interested in learning more about the seminar or would like to be added to our email list, please contact me at joseph dot stuart at utah dot edu. If you would like to co-sponsor a speaking event, with a scholar speaking on a topic that you or your organization are invested in, please contact me at the same address.