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A few years ago I came across a list of Mormon Studies courses <\/a>complied by BYU professor Gideon Burton in 2008, the same year that the Claremont Graduate University started their Mormon Studies program and a year after Utah State started its program. Since it has been a few years, I thought Gideon’s list should be updated. I believe it gives a sense of how Mormon Studies is developing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Including everything, even the many BYU religion courses and courses that just have a component that focuses on Mormonism, I count about 150 courses that include Mormonism at least briefly. But, if we look at the list below narrowly, including just those that cover only Mormonism, there are about 30, and even that list might be considered generous. [Should I include the BYU-Hawaii course on “Baton Technique and Hymnody” in Mormon Studies? It is restricted to LDS hymns!]<\/p>\n
Even ignoring the complexity of deciding what courses count towards Mormon Studies, the list is quite fascinating. It includes courses in nearly a dozen subject areas, including, Anthropology, Biology, Communication, English, Geology, History, Philosophy, Psychology, Religious Studies, Sociology, and others. Religious Studies courses are the most common, even if you exclude the religion courses at BYU, BYU-Idaho and BYU-Hawaii (which together account for some 93 courses. I have NOT included them in the list below). Next most common is courses in History, followed by Anthropology and English.<\/p>\n
I haven’t been able to analyze whether or not this list represents an actual increase in the number of courses since Gideon Burton’s 2008 search, because I don’t know how thorough Gideon’s search was. I do know that my own search was clearly not thorough (I didn’t look at every college catalog in the nation), and I do NOT think that I got everything. I suspect that Gideon didn’t search all the places that I did, so I may have picked up some courses that would have been found in 2008 if the search then was more detailed. So, we simply don’t know if the number of courses is going up or not.<\/p>\n
Preparing a list of Mormon Studies courses requires also facing a few logistical and methodological problems. Just because a course is listed in a University’s catalog doesn’t mean that it is taught every year — and in a few cases courses in the catalog never get taught. I hope, in future years, to look at class schedules as well, perhaps presenting a list of courses taught during the current term, courses taught within the past year but not in the current term, and courses currently listed in the catalog. But I haven’t got the time to do that this year, and many colleges and universities don’t allow you to go back and look at expired class schedules. I’d also like to list who is teaching the classes, but that information isn’t given in the catalogs, only on class schedules.<\/p>\n
I have noticed that some courses Gideon found have since disappeared, and that usually seems to happen when the professor teaching the course is no longer there. That seems to be what happened to the “Mormonism and the American Experience” class taught at the Harvard Divinity School, and I’ve seen it at a couple of other places also. Even at Claremont, some classes listed below will probably disappear because Richard and Claudia Bushman have left to return to Columbia. Fortunately, this means that Columbia will now have a Mormon Studies course starting in the Spring.<\/p>\n
The list below is NOT complete. If you know of a course that is missing, please, please point it out. I believe this list is useful, and since Gideon hasn’t updated the list, I thought it was worth doing. But I do appreciate any feedback.<\/p>\n