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Prairie Roots Run Deep: A Geologically Grounded History Of Elk Horn, Iowa, Warren Watson

The Bridge

Clay Township is located in the southeast corner of Shelby County, Iowa. It is made up of thirty-six one-mile square sections. The top tier of sections one through six are somewhat larger due to a surveying correction. It was one of the last townships in Shelby County to be settled. The first settlers were drawn to the northeast corner of Shelby County in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Once a Dane got a foothold in Clay Township in the 1860s, the area became populated quickly. It was eventually settled by the largest contingent of Danes in America. This is …

Six Objects From Sned: Remembering The Past On Jens Jensen’S Childhood Farm, J.R. Christianson

The Bridge

When Jens Jensen was growing up in Denmark, the past was never very far away. Sometimes it was way too close, like the day one of the great events of Danish history happened right there on their family farm. Jens was only three years old, but it was not something one would forget, even at his age. The day was April 18, 1864, when one of the fiercest battles in Danish history was fought on the hillside where their farm lay. Needless to say, it tore the place apart.

War A Good Warfare Understanding Agency In The Plan Of Salvation, Grant Arnold

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

John Calvin (1509–1564) is credited with expanding the concept of predestination. In the third book of his Institutio Christianae Religionis (Institutes of the Christian religion), he claimed that “all are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.”[1] Although Calvin was opining on salvation, his words, of necessity, affected free will. Specifically, if salvation is ordained, then our choices are meaningless because God has already predetermined …

“Dumb” Puns In Alma 30: A Mesoamerican Twist On Korihor’S Talionic Punishment, Mark Alan Wright, Neal Rappleye

BYU Studies

Evidence for the use of both puns and talionic (or reciprocal) punishment by peoples of the Book of Mormon is well attested. To complement previous research in these areas, which focused primarily on data from the ancient Near East, we argue that Mesoamerican wordplay and legal systems may also be evident in the account of Korihor recorded in Alma 30. Recognizing these connections to the text’s plausible cultural and linguistic context illuminates why Korihor receives the punishment he is given: it was no arbitrary consequence, but one tailored to his accusations in an irony-laden narrative that would have been easily …

Full Issue

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Your Daddy Or Your Father?— Mimetic Desire Versus Christian Fatherhood, Bryce Dixon

BYU Studies

“The Yankees are my Daddy,” the Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez famously announced following the loss of some critical baseball games to their New York City rivals. The idiom “Daddy” refers to a victor’s domination over a loser in a competition. The winner becomes the Daddy, and the loser the submissive child. Ironically, a Red Sox player, David Ortiz—nicknamed “Big Papi,” or “Big Daddy” in Spanish—became the Yankees’ “Daddy” when his batting heroics led the Red Sox to a miraculous comeback win over the Yankees in the 2004 playoffs, reversing the “curse of the Bambino” that was believed to …

Interpretive Language And Museum Artwork: How Patrons Respond To Depictions Of Native American And White Settler Encounters--A Thematic Analysis, Holli D. Rogerson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to conduct a thematic linguistic analysis of survey responses to museum-quality images depicting various Native American and white settler encounters. The survey asked participants to provide written responses (fill in the blank prompts) to a selection of twelve images composed of photographs and paintings representing one or more of three overarching themes: violence, immersion, and goodwill/collaboration. The research focused on four demographic groups: Latter-day Saints, Native Americans, museum employees, and total participants. Each response was individually analyzed by hand and assigned appropriate classification tags based on the types of words their responses contained including …

The Case For Hildeburg: Beowulf And Ethical Subjectivity, Wendolyn Weber

Quidditas

This essay argues for a reading of Beowulf, and the female peaceweaver figures therein, in contemporary philosophical terms of Levinasian ethical subjectivity. Such a reading illuminates the peaceweaver, often caught between action and passivity and viewed as a victim of death-driven masculinist heroic culture, as an exemplar rather of the radical destabilization experienced through ethical subjection and an important key to the complexities of the heroic ethos. It illustrates the enduring value of texts such as Beowulf to inform our understanding of often oversimplified concepts like that of the “warrior ethos” in contemporary culture.

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Maxwell Institute Well Represented At Fair Conference

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Four scholars from the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship spoke at the FAIR conference held in Sandy, Utah, in August. FAIR, the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of Latter-day Saint doctrine, belief, and practice.

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Chat With The New Editors Of The Maxwell Institute Journals

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Accompanying this issue of Insights is volume 17 (combining numbers one and two) of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies; however, readers will note that the Journal now carries a new name, the Journal of the Book of Mormon and Restoration Scripture. In connection with this change, the Institute asked Andrew H. Hedges, an associate professor of Church History and Doctrine at BYU, to become the new editor, replacing Professor S. Kent Brown, who served as editor and associate editor for many years, and who recently retired from the university. The new associate editors are Grant Hardy, professor of …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Of Mormon Swords In Mesoamerican Antiquity, Matthew Roper

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Swords are an important weapon in the Book of Mormon narrative. The prophet Ether reported that in the final battle of the Jaredites, King Coriantumr, with his sword, “smote off the head” of his relentless enemy Shiz (Ether 15:30). Swords were also used by the earliest Nephites (2 Nephi 5:14) and were among the deadly weapons with which that people were finally “hewn down” at Cumorah by their enemies (Mormon 6:9–10). While the text suggests that some Jaredites and early Nephites may have had metal weaponry (1 Nephi 4:9; 2 Nephi 5:14; Mosiah 8:10–11; Ether 7:9), references to metal weapons, …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Inscribed Gold Plate Fits Book Of Mormon Pattern, John A. Tvedtnes

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

An inscribed gold plate 2.2 centimeters in length has been uncovered in a third-century ad Jewish burial. The burial, that of a young child, is located in a Roman cemetery in Halbturn, Austria. The news was released by archaeologists at the University of Vienna’s Institute of Prehistory and Early History.

Mesoamerican “Cimeters” In Book Of Mormon Times, Matthew Roper

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The Book of Mormon first mentions a weapon called a cimeter during the time of Enos (some time between about 544 and 421 bc). Speaking of his people’s Lamanite enemies, Enos says, “their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax” (Enos 1:20). Later, in the first and second centuries bc, the weapon was part of the armory of both Nephites and Lamanites in addition to swords and other weapons (Mosiah 9:16; 10:8; Alma 2:12; 43:18, 20, 37; 60:2; Helaman 1:14).

The Occupation Of The Uyghur People By The Chinese Communist Party, Duncan Forrest

Ballard Brief

The Uyghurs are a group of ethnic Muslims in China that have recently been invaded by an external government: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Uyghurs inhabit a resource-rich part of China that the CCP desires to control because of China's growing population and large-scale international projects. The stark religious differences between the CCP and Uyghurs have also fueled the conflict. Additionally, the CCP has claimed that the Uyghur people are separatists and terrorists, threatening the CCP. The unforthcoming nature of the CCP has made it difficult for outside observers to understand the extent of the human rights violations in …

Womans Exponent Transcription File For Download, Lula Greene Richards, Emmeline B. Wells, Annie Wells Cannon, Harold B. Lee Library

The Woman’s Exponent Transcription

No abstract provided.

The Apache Wars And The Swiss Sergeant, John Spring, Albert Winkler

Swiss American Historical Society Review

The Apache Wars were a series of conflicts that comprised the longest sequence of confrontations between a Native American Nation and the white Americans of the United States. These largely took place starting with the first US military incursions into the American Southwest in 1846 during the War with Mexico and lasted until Geronimo’s final surrender in 1886. While most of the fighting occurred in the modern US states of Arizona and New Mexico, yet much of the warfare was between the Mexicans and the Apaches dating back to the seventeenth century. Those wars were very costly in lives and …

Full Issue, Albert Winkler, Robert Sherwood

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Full Issue of Volume 58 issue 2 of the Swiss American Historical Society Journal

Tidal Translations: Thinking-With Untranslatability In Craig Santos Perez's From Unincorporated Territory, Maryn Gardner

Theses and Dissertations

Craig Santos Perez's poetic series from Unincorporated Territory describes and decries the U.S. militarization, colonization, and environmental degradation of Guam in the Western Pacific through multilingual, excerpted, and series-long poems. Perez's writing style requires slow, careful reading with translations sometimes appearing on the same page, various pages later, or not at all. I describe this kind of elongated translation as slow translation, recalling translation theorist Michael Cronin's "Slow Language" movement. This thesis invites readers, especially multispecies ethnographers, to slow down the translation of nonhuman species and their stories by paying attention to moments of untranslatability in multispecies literature and interactions. …

Mutants, Sentinels, And Cerebro: Messages About Technology And Society In Science Fiction Films, Paige Marie Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Technology plays a significant role in society and in entertainment. People hold an ambivalent attitude about technology that is often illustrated in science fiction films. Much like myth telling stories to teach a lesson, science fiction films caution viewers of the effects of powerful technology usage in culture today. This thesis examines X-Men to show how relevant principles found in myth continue to be relevant to media consumption. Using media ecology to inform the reader about the technological environment (Mumford, 1944), this analysis of technology portrayed in X-Men shows the implications real world technology, such as radiation, weapons, and artificial …

Gas Phase Structure Characterization Of Host-Guest Systems Using Ion Mobility Spectrometry, Jamir Shrestha

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the investigation of gas-phase characteristics of cucurbituril host-guest systems using ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) and related techniques. Collision cross-sections (CCS) of alkylammonium complexes of cucurbit[n]uril (CB[n]) are measured to understand the allosteric interactions that induce conformational changes in the complex in the presence of metal cations on one of the portals of the cucurbit[6]uril (CB[6]) host. Cationic species on one CB[6] rim sterically force longer linear alkylammonium guests out of the cucurbituril cavity during complex formation. Similarly, rigid cucurbituril-metal complexes were studied using IMS to demonstrate the effect of long-range ion-neutral interactions on the gas phase …

“I—I Can’T Talk About Things”: The Tragedy Of Post-Wwii Civilian Masculinity In Agatha Christie’S Taken At The Flood, Rebekah Olsen

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the ways in which Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood serves to illustrate the fragility and ultimate destabilization of masculinity immediately following WWII. Christie illustrates this break by comparing two men, David Hunter and Rowley Cloade who represent types of men in Britain’s postwar landscape. Throughout the text, David Hunter is framed as a dangerous and dreadful young man, serving as a representation of post-war fears about demobbed soldiers attacking young women. However, the story really revolves around the civilian trauma that Rowley Cloade has sustained through his wartime role as a farmer, which comes from repression …

Managing Radio Frequency Interference In Vehicular Multi-Antenna Transceivers, Jakob W. Kunzler

Theses and Dissertations

Radio frequency interference is an ever growing problem in the wireless community. This dissertation presents methods to reduce interference for vehicular multi-antenna devices. This document is organized into two parts: the main chapters and the appendices. The main chapters present research conducted primarily by the author. These deserve the reader's primary attention. The appendices showcase contributions made by the author serving in a supporting role to projects led by others and/or do not fit the vehicular theme. These should receive secondary attention. The main chapter contributions are summarized as follows. A device was created that provides over 105 dB of …

The Battle Of Dornach 1499: A Contest Between Two Early Tactical Infantries, Albert Winkler

Swiss American Historical Society Review

In July of 1499, two well-trained tactical infantries fought

at the Battle of Dornach when the Swiss peasants and Swabian

mercenaries or Landsknechte met in a major engagement for the first

time. The Swiss infantry had been dominating battlefields in many

parts of Europe for decades, but the Battle of Dornach was a close

contest demonstrating that Swiss dominance might be over and a new

age of infantries was soon to begin. While tactical infantries had been

deployed on the field of battle for centuries, this was one of the few

times in the Middle Ages that two of them …

Full Issue

Swiss American Historical Society Review

No abstract provided.

The Last Nephite Scribes, Noel B. Reynolds

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In an earlier paper, I concluded that Lehi and Nephi were highly trained Josephite scribes and were associated with an official Jerusalem scribal school that preserved ancient Manassite traditions. There they acquired advanced writing skills and classical Hebrew and Egyptian, which would become the scriptural languages of the Nephite peoples. These they maintained in the new promised land and passed on from generation to generation through the entire thousand-year Nephite dispensation, even though the Nephite language itself would naturally evolve. Evidence of how they did this surfaces repeatedly throughout the Book of Mormon. T he following paper documents how both …

Rich Vein Or Fools Gold?, Morgan Deane

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Proclaim Peace is the first full-length volume discussing nonviolent theology in Latter-day Saint thought. It seeks to provide a new understanding of Restoration texts that aligns Mormon thought with modern pacifist traditions. Unfortunately, the book suffers from methodology issues that include an overly creative reading of some scriptures to support pacifist theories and the minimization of others’ theories. The book fails to interact with just-war ethics in meaningful ways that could enhance their ethic of peace. As a result, the book is longer than other pacifist texts but suffers from the same problems as previous entries in talking past those …