In recent months we’ve had our threads improved upon by the comments of Joel, a fellow academic in training. He’s accepted our invitation to spend some time with us and share some of his insights. Incidently, this past week Joel served as a commentator on the JI’s Stanley Thayne’s paper given at a conference on sexuality and gender (although Stan’s paper was on a celibate twentieth-century female prophet, his session also contained papers on transgenderism). Anyway, here is Joel’s autobiographical act:

Although I was born outside the Jello belt in Cortez, Colorado, my family’s ancestral home has always been in Rexburg, Idaho where my parents continue to live to this day. I served in the Trujillo, Peru Mission and spent four months in Cajamarca near the plaza where Pizarro infamously encountered the Incan leader Atahualpa. I have a B.S. in History from BYU-Idaho and an MA from USU. My Masters thesis explored the lives of Japanese Americans in the intermountain West from the early twentieth century to World War II. Presently, I am working on a PhD in History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My dissertation hopes to paint the World War II internment of Japanese Americans in an international, transnational,and imperial framework. I have a beautiful wife, but no kids yet. I have truly enjoyed reading the posts at the Juvenile Instructor, but I often feel like I don’t know as much about Mormon history as the rest of you. I can only hope that my alternative positionality will offer some interesting perspectives on this fascinating topic.

 Let’s welcome Joel.