Category: Mormon Studies

  • Stop! Hamer time

    Next Friday and Saturday, May 21st and 22nd, John Hamer will be at Miller Eccles in southern California to discuss the history of the Community of Christ.  John’s work is fascinating, and if you’re in the area, I’d encourage you to attend one of the two events, either on Friday the 21st in Orange County,…

  • Dialogue 2.0

    Searchable archives.  Free access to the entire vault of past articles.  Helpful starting points in a Classics section.  No more one-page-at-a-time clicking through the wacky — lovable in a quirky way, but definitely *not* user-friendly — old pdf-image page-by-page e-archives at the U library website.  Did I mention, we’re talking about searchable archives and free…

  • Mormon History, Brazilian Perspective — A Call for Papers

    The Brazilian Association for Mormon Studies has issued a call for papers for its 2011 conference, with the theme “Mormon History from a Brazilian Perspective.”

  • Claremont Conference: What Is Mormon Studies?

    Claremont Conference: What Is Mormon Studies?

    The Claremont Mormon Studies Student Association is holding its Spring 2010 Conference on April 23 and 24 on the theme What Is Mormon Studies? Transdisciplinary Inquiries into an Emerging Field. The Conference line-up is as follows: Keynote Address Jan Shipps – Indiana University-Purdue University Critical Approaches to Mormon Studies Loyd Ericson – “Where is the…

  • Theological Anthropology at UVU this weekend

    The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology holds its 2010 conference at UVU this Thursday through Saturday (March 25-27) on the theme of theological anthropology. Invited speakers include: Terryl L. Givens (University of Richmond)—”Finding the Divine in Man: Romantic Angst and the Collapse of Transcendence”; Kevin Hart (University of Virginia)—”The Prodigal Son”; Laurence Hemming (Lancaster…

  • MR: “You’ll Never Walk Alone: The Mormon Church, Proposition 8, and British Soccer”

    A new issue of The Mormon Review is available, with David K. Jones’s review of You’ll Never Walk Alone by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. The article is available at: David K. Jones, “You’ll Never Walk Alone: The Mormon Church, Proposition 8, and British Soccer,” The Mormon Review, vol.2 no. 1 [HTML] [PDF] For more…

  • MR: “Getting Your Hands Dirty”

    MR: “Getting Your Hands Dirty”

    A new issue of The Mormon Review is available, with Russell Arben Fox’s review of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford. The article is available at: Russell Arben Fox, “Getting Your Hands Dirty: Notes on How Mormons (and Everyone) Should Work,” The Mormon Review, vol.1 no. 8…

  • MR: “Music From Across the Divide”

    A new issue of The Mormon Review is available, with a review of the music of Sara Groves by Troy Keller. The article is available at: Troy Keller, “Music From Across the Divide,” The Mormon Review, vol.1 no. 7 [HTML] [PDF] For more information about MR, please take a look at the prospectus by our…

  • MR: “The Romance of Materialism: Notes on Hitchcock’s Vertigo”

    A new issue of The Mormon Review is available, with a review of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Vertigo” by Joseph M. Spencer. The article is available at: Joseph M. Spencer, “The Romance of Materialism: Notes on Hitchcock’s Vertigo,” The Mormon Review, vol.1 no. 6 [HTML] [PDF] For more information about MR, please take a look at…

  • Joseph Smith Papers Book Signing – October 1

    This new volume is the second overall in the Joseph Smith Papers, but is the first of the Revelations and Translation series which will provide transcripts of many of the earliest manuscripts of Joseph Smith’s written revelations and translations…

  • Mormon Studies on a Kindle?

    I was kind of excited when I got my Kindle a few weeks ago. I liked the idea of having lots of books in one place, not having to haul the usual load around. I liked the idea of searching a book easily, of highlighting text and copying it out. Other features, like mailing in…

  • Mormon Studies on a Budget?

    A few years ago, Armand Mauss advised our readers that an essential texts list for Mormon studies probably included a dozen books (including Shipps, Bushman, Arrington, and Givens) as well as regular reading of four major periodicals. That remains a very good recommendation; however, for many Mormon studies newbies, that level of depth may not…

  • Where Will National Mormon Politicians Come From?

    That may sound like the introduction to a bad joke, but I actually have a serious answer.

  • Thou-thee-thy from other angles

    In General Conference of April 2009, Elder Russell M. Nelson reminded us:

  • 12 Questions for Marvin Perkins, Part One

    Marvin Perkins has graciously agreed to answer a few questions from Times & Seasons. Brother Perkins is a Latter-day Saint music producer who is currently the Public Affairs Co-chair for the Genesis Group and who has worked to nurture understanding between African Americans and Latter-day Saints and attack misconceptions. As part of this effort, he…

  • DNA Delight

    A recent DNA study has gotten some attention, both on our sidebar and in a post by J. Nelson-Seawright at By Common Consent. The Mormon question that inevitably comes up from such a study is does it cast any light on the question of whether Lehi really landed in the Americas long ago? J. Nelson-Seawright…

  • What I Learned about Mormon Courts (and the Writing of Mormon History)

    For those who are interested in Mormon legal history, my article “Preaching to the Court House and Judging in the Temple” was just published in the most recent issue of the BYU Law Review. (You can download a copy of the article here.) This article provides my own take on the rise and fall of…

  • What Does it Mean When a Book is Mentioned in Conference?

    Some time ago, I started putting together lists of the books mentioned and referenced in General Conference Talks. So during the Priesthood Session I started wondering what would be referenced in the printed version of Elder Eyring’s talk. The talk, titled “Man Down!” included Elder Eyring’s telling of a story widely known as “Black Hawk…

  • The Implied Statistical Report, 2008

    Every General Conference, the LDS Church releases a statistical report that gives a brief window into how the Church has changed over the past year. With my accounting background, I’m a bit of a statistics wonk, and I’ve long thought that there is a lot that can be gleaned from these statistics and from the…

  • Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah at BYU

    This looks like the sort of conference that makes me sad at times that I don’t live in Utah:

  • BYU Church History Symposium, Feb 27th

    Church Historian Marlin K. Jensen and Asst. Church Historian Richard E. Turley Jr. will be among the many speakers at this year’s BYU Church History Symposium.  The event is free, open to the public, and requires no registration.   More information can be found at the symposium web page.   Full announcement below.

  • Getting over Nibley

    Of late I have been thinking of late about how to read Mormon scriptures.  In particular, I have been working on some passages in the Book of Mormon on legal interpretation and thinking about how best to approach these sections.  By and large, it seems to me that there have been three basic models of how to…

  • First Mormon Studies Fellowships Announced

    Mormon Studies took another step forward this week with the announcement of two doctoral fellowships in Mormon Studies. Courtesy of the George S. and Delores Doré Eccles Foundation, the two fellowships will be awarded one a year this year and next. With any luck, the fellowships will be repeated in future years, assuming that they…

  • Call for Papers: SMPT at Claremont, 2009

    The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology’s 2009 conference will be held at Claremont Graduate University, May 21-23, in cooperation with the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and the Claremont Mormon Studies Student Association.

  • Of Courses

    I recieved one of those continuing education catalogs in the mail today (from Lehman College, not BYU), and glancing through it, I began to wonder why the courses are all very basic. The courses are all introductory, and seem to be for those looking to start a career in relatively low-skill professions. I suppose there…

  • Dancing the Doctrines: Theology in Motion

    A call for papers, panels, movement sessions and choreography Sponsored by the Department of Dance with support from the BYU Museum of Art July 17 and 18, 2009 at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art and in the BYU Richards Building dance studios.

  • The Canonization of the Book of Mormon?

    Penguin Books has just published a “Penguin Classics” edition of the Book of Mormon edited by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp. Penguin Classics, of course, are the paperback editions of literary staples like Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. They are printed and marketed largely as texts for college classes. The assumption is that a text included in…

  • 2009 LDS Law Students Conference at Harvard Law School

    The J. Reuben Clark Society’s annual student conference will be held this year at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Registration is now open, and I urge LDS students, lawyers, and interested laypersons to attend. FYI.

  • Confirm or Deny?

    The following is making the email rounds with lightning speed. It claims to be talk given recently by President Packer. Can anyone confirm or deny?

  • Teaching the Reformation

    Just as I went to publish this post, I saw Ben’s post about the conference on Mormons and Evangelicals. It’s a nice coincidence. As are the recent posts by Kent and Marc on labeling and categorizing. I was already scheduled to attend another conference this week, an annual conference for historians of the Reformation (surely…