Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Perceived Preceptor: Narrator's Role In Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Jason Godfrey

Faculty Publications

In this article, I posit that Austen uses her self-aware, colloquial narrator to satirize Catherine’s grandiose fantasies and quiz (or mock) the reader who would prefer a story where fantasies are indulged and also to instruct the reader about the importance of discernment both in-text and in larger social discourse.

John E. Davis (William H. Norman) -- A Galvanized Yankee In Utah, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

An interesting and intriguing story about William H. Norman, who served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War as an infantry rifleman from Georgia, was captured by Union troops in December 1864 outside of Nashville, Tennessee, and was then incarcerated as a prisoner-of-war in Camp Douglas, Illinois. As a Confederate prisoner, the federal government gave him the option of remaining in the camp or renouncing his Confederate loyalty and enlisting in the Union Army. Like thousands of his fellow prisoners, he chose the second option and became a "galvanized Yankee." A few months later (after the end of …

"I Was Not Ready To Die Yet": William Stowell's Utah War Ordeal, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D., R. Devan Jensen

Faculty Publications

In the fall of 1857, young wives Cynthia Jane Stowell and Sophronia Stowell bade fare­well to their husband, William R. R. Stowell, a lieutenant in the Utah militia working to hinder the US Army from entering Utah Territory. That winter they received word that William had been captured and was being held prisoner at Camp Scott, in present-day Wyoming. The Utah War arose from a complex web of causes and motivations: federal and Utah territorial authorities often clashed regarding Mormon authority and influence in the territorial court sys­tem, the mail service, policies regarding American-Indian relations, polygamy, and the moral character …

Changes In The Timber Industry As A Catalyst For Linguistic Change, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Catastrophic Change

• “Catastrophic events have played a major role in the history of all languages, primarily in the form of population dislocations… [They] are more common than previously believed.”
• The rise of island tourism in Ocracoke in 1960s.
• Daily boat from Smith Island to mainland in 1974

Traditional features typically lost; innovative features expand.

• Texas and Oklahoma after WWII
• Influx of immigrants in Eastern Pennsylvania.
• Migration across dialect boundary in New England.

The Linguistic Effects Of A Changing Timber Industry: Language Change In Cowlitz County, Wa, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Linguistic changes happened because of the changing timber industry.

All Kindreds Shall Be Blessed: Nephite, Jewish, And Christian Interpretations Of The Abrahamic Covenant, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

A review of current and traditional scholarship regarding the covenant God made with Abraham combined with a thorough review of Book of Mormon references shows that the Nephite understanding varies in important ways from traditional Christian and Jewish interpretations. However, some of the insights of contemporary scholarship are more compatible with the Book of Mormon perspective.

Stories Of Scribbling Women: Hands-On Research In Book History With Women's Studies Students, Maggie Kopp

Faculty Publications

BYU Special Collections curators taught an Honors Western Civilization survey course with our collections for over two decades, but after a reboot of the Honors curriculum the course was dropped. A new opportunity arose in 2014 when the Women’s Studies program wanted to expand their offerings. But the course needed a major overhaul. This poster describes some of the changes that were made.

Beyond The Exodus: Nauvoo After 1849, Rebecca A. Wiederhold, Dainan Skeem

Faculty Publications

Nauvoo, the City Beautiful, was named by Joseph Smith in 1839 when the Mormons began settling the area. After seven short years, the Saints had built a city to rival Chicago at the time. In 1844, Joseph was martyred and in 1847 the Mormons fled the city, changing the makeup of the town’s population and the direction of its growth. Emma Smith eventually returned with the remainder of her family and was beloved of the neighborhood children. Many other families not associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continued to farm the land and raise families. As …

The Ancient Doctrine Of The Two Ways And The Book Of Mormon, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Scholars have long recognized that a number of ancient cultures shared a traditional doctrine of the Two Ways that could be used to instruct youth and others in the right way to live their lives. While the language of the Two Ways surfaces on occasion in both the Old and New Testaments, the doctrine is not developed or explained in any detail in the Bible. However, noncanonical texts of the Greco-Roman period display a highly developed and stylized form of the doctrine in both Jewish and Christian traditions. The earliest known version of these stylized forms of the doctrine occurs …

Understanding The Abrahamic Covenant Through The Book Of Mormon, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Interpretation of God's covenant to Abrahamic and its promised fulfillment varies across scholarly and religious writings. The Book of Mormon emphasizes this covenant and the promise that through Abraham all the kindreds of the earth will be blessed. It also features a unique interpretation--that the covenant will be fulfilled as the Book of Mormon itself, a record of the seed of Joseph, is given first to the Gentiles, and then to house of Israel.

On Doubting Nephi's Break Between 1 And 2 Nephi: A Critique Of Joseph Spencer's "An Other Testament: On Typology", Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

This essay rejects the proposal by Joseph Spencer to recognize the true break in Nephi's two books as occurring after the fifth chapter of the second book. The essay invokes standard interpretive practices arguing that while Spencer does present reasoning to make sense of this novel proposal, he does not acknowledge the much greater weight of standard interpretation or provide explanations for ignoring it.

How "Come Unto Me" Fits In The Nephite Gospel", Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Book of Mormon readers can easily be left wondering in numerous passages where the repeated term "come unto me/him/Christ" refers to unspecified elements of the gospel understood as "the way" by which men and women can come to him. This paper identifies six passages that are presented as quotations from Jesus himself and that have identical rhetorical structures---in which this phrase appears to refer each time to that stage of the gospel described as "enduring to the end." This discovery may offer useful interpretive guidance for the numerous other passages that invoke the same phrase. This paper was updated June …

The Ancient Doctrine Of The Two Ways In The Book Of Mormon, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Consistent with their preexilic Hebrew Bible predecessors, the Book of Mormon prophets taught a version of the Two Ways doctrine that featured (1) invitations to repentance defined as turning or returning to God’s way, (2) the context of the Abrahamic covenant, (3) the blessings and cursings that would come from obedience or disobedience, and (4) the contrast of the path of righteousness that leads to life with the path of evil that leads to death. But this analysis has also produced a number of expansions or refinements of the Two Ways doctrine that are not reflected in biblical treatments of …

The Latter-Day Saint Reimaging Of “The Breath Of Life” (Genesis 2:7), Dana M. Pike

Faculty Publications

The creation and flood accounts in Genesis in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) contain variations on a phrase commonly translated “the breath of life.” This phrase additionally occurs in some uniquely Latter-day Saint materials relating to creation. After overviewing and analyzing this phrase and its meaning in the Bible, this paper then examines the occurrences of the phrase “the breath of life” in important early Latter-day Saint texts.1 The purpose of this study is to illustrate and explain how and why many Latter-day Saints have come to often employ the phrase “the breath of life,” transforming its traditional …

Obadiah 1:21 Context, Text, Interpretation, And Application, Dana M. Pike

Faculty Publications

Latter-day Saints have frequently used the phrase “saviors on mount Zion” in relation to proxy temple work for the dead. This phrase comes from the twenty-first, and last, verse of Obadiah, a prophetic book in the Old Testament. But many people have little awareness of or experience with the previous twenty verses in the book, nor with the intriguing contextual questions those verses raise for understanding verse 21, with its phrase “saviours shall come up on mount Zion” (KJV1; note the British spelling with a u; used herein only in quotations). Furthermore, there has been little Latter-day Saint discussion of …

Muslim Families In The United States, Trevan Hatch, Loren Marks, David C. Dollahite

Faculty Publications

Jn 2004, we drew attention to the fact that almost all of the social science research on religion and families examined Christian families-and only Christian families (Dollahite, Marks, & Goodman, 2004). Specifically, we noted a "conspicuous" absence of research on both Muslim and Jewish families (p. 422). We have made a pronounced effort to include both Muslim families and Jewish families in the American Families of Faith project, and virtually all of our work includes both along with Christian families from various denominations. Some of our recent work has focused solely on Muslim families or Jewish families (e.g., Alghafli, Hatch, …

Veiling In Fear Or In Faith? Meanings Of The Hijab To Practicing Muslim Wives And Husbands In The United States, Zahra Alghafli, Loren Marks, Trevan Hatch, Andrew Rose

Faculty Publications

This article examines the Muslim practice of wearing the hijab—the veiling and covering of a woman’s head and body. More specifically, this study aims to present insiders’ perspectives regarding the personal understandings of the hijab among 20 wives and 20 husbands (n = 40) in religious Shia and Sunni Muslim families living in the United States. Qualitative analysis yielded three emergent themes: (1) The hijab as a symbol of religious commitment; (2) The hijab as a tool of protection, rather than oppression, for women and families; and (3) Two different views of Muslims’ reasoning behind the hijab. These …

Jewish Families In The United States, Trevan Hatch, Loren Marks, David C. Dollahite

Faculty Publications

As mentioned in chapter 8, the rich context of religious minority families offers the chance to highlight issues like identity formation in youth and emerging adults, the importance of social support from their religious community, and the unique challenges religious minorities face as they strive to live their religion. In this chapter we feature Judaism and the 30 Jewish families from the American Families of Faith project.

History Of The Taipei Temple, John Hilton Iii

Faculty Publications

MANY PRISONERS SUFFERED at the Taihoku Prison in Taipei, Taiwan, during World War II. Yet, less than two decades later, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints purchased a portion of this land and transformed it from a desolate site into a warm and inviting chapel where Latter-day Saints sought to bring their friends. Elder Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated it on October 16, 1966. Fewer than five thousand members resided in Taiwan at the time. In 1984, Hinckley returned to the same plot of land to dedicate a temple adjacent to the chapel. During one of his addresses, he …

Formed In And Called From The Womb, Dana M. Pike

Faculty Publications

Jeremiah’s call narrative or vocation report includes a clear example of pre-birth divine election:

(1:4) “Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,

(1:5a) ‘Before I formed you in the womb [babbetẹ n] I knew you,

(5b) and before you were born [came forth from the womb/mēreḥem] I consecrated you;

(5c) I appointed you a prophet to the nations’” (Jer. 1:4–5; NRSV).

However, there is ambiguity about the meaning of the phrase “from the womb” and there are persistent questions about the relationship between Jeremiah 1:5a—“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”—and 1:5b+c, “before you …

Physical Evidence And The Battle Of The Little Bighorn: The Question Of Interpretation, Albert Winkler

Faculty Publications

Archaeologists have identified over a thousand shell casings and bullets at the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Many theories on the nature of the battle, the effectiveness of the weapons, and the location of the fighting have been proposed by the location of these artifacts. But there are major problems in interpretation. Only about 1% of the supposed artifacts remain, and the vast majority were plundered long ago. The artifacts are suspect because there is no way to know if they actually had anything to do with the battle or if they were added later. Any analysis …

Diasporic Transnationalism In Zoë Wicomb’S "The One That Got Away" And "October", Aaron Eastley

Faculty Publications

Whereas the early works of South African/Scottish writer Zoë Wicomb delved into racial tensions caused by apartheid, her more recent works excavate diasporic tensions tied to present-day travel and transnationalism. In her 2009 short story collection The One That Got Away and her 2014 novel October, Wicomb presents a series of narratives in which Cape Town and Glasgow collide. In these narratives Wicomb gravitates toward the experiences of mostly middle-class immigrants and visitors, often in later stages of life, operating in the relatively established multiculturalism of today's South Africa and UK. The irony of present-day transnational mobility as Wicomb …

Standardized Testing In Reading, Troy L. Cox

Faculty Publications

While some may think that standardized testing is a recent innovation restricted to the United States, it has actually been part of educational landscape for centuries (Min & Xiuwen, 2001; Spolsky, 1995; Barnwell, 1996). The first standardized tests were the proposed solution to combat the problems that existed with appointing civil servants based on cronyism instead of merit. An unknown functionary in the Chinese government hypothesized that a small sample of behavior gathered under carefully controlled circumstances would predict future behavior in uncontrolled situations (Wainer, Bradlow, & Wang, 2007). This observation led to the first, standardized, job-screening tests used to …

Understanding Intermediate- Level Speakers’ Strengths And Weaknesses: An Examination Of Opic Tests From Korean Learners Of English, Troy L. Cox

Faculty Publications

This study profiled Intermediate-level learners in terms of their linguistic characteristics and performance on different proficiency tasks. A stratified random sample of 300 Korean learners of English with holistic ratings of Intermediate Low (IL), Intermediate Mid (IM), and Intermediate High (IH) on Oral Proficiency Interviews- computerized (OPIcs)—100 at each level—were analyzed by trained ACTFL raters to determine what was needed for the learners to progress to the next higher sublevel. The findings indicate that while ILs minimally met all the linguistic characteristics required of the Intermediate level, they needed to improve in the quantity and quality of all the linguistic …

The Perception And Production Of Two Vowel Mergers In Cowlitz County, Washington, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Recent literature has revealed ongoing variation in Pacific Northwest English. In particular, back vowels (cf. Ward 2003; Becker et al. 2013; McLarty & Kendall 2014) and pre-velar front vowels (cf. Wassink et al. 2009; Riebold 2015; 2015, and others) have received considerable attention. In this paper I present recent data from Cowlitz County, Washington that shed light other mergers involving these vowels.

Automated Large-Scale Phonetic Analysis: Dass, Joseph A. Stanley, William A. Kretzschmar Jr., Katherine Kuiper

Faculty Publications

DASS

• 64 interviews available on a portable USB drive
• 370 hours of sound files--c. 200Gb, about 5000 files in all—plus metadata
• LICHEN user interface software

Static And Dynamic Approaches To Vowel Shifting In The Digital Archive Of Southern Speech, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick

Faculty Publications

Speech varies widely in the American South, but the region is argued to share features including monophthongization of upgliding diphthongs, convergence of certain front vowels via raising and lowering, and back-vowel fronting. We investigate the influence of speaker sex and ethnicity on vowel production using data from the Digital Archive of Southern Speech. This corpus of 64 linguistic interviews (372 hours, recorded 1968–1983) offers large amounts of data from individual speakers, whose semi-spontaneous nature reveals a more realistic portrait of phonetic variability than is typically available. Interviews of European- and African American speakers permit comparison of the Southern Vowel Shift …

Making Ritual Strange: The Temple Cult As The Foundation For Tannaitic Discourse On Idolatry, Avram R. Shannon

Faculty Publications

This article examines the Tannaitic conception of the worship of avodah zarah. The term is commonly translated as “idolatry,”but the definition of what constitutes worship of avodah zarah, in m. Sanh. 7:6, is based on a more nuanced notion than simply worship of foreign gods. For the Sages of the Mishnah, worship of avodah zarah involved misuse of objects and rituals associated with the Temple cult, which constituted a betrayal of covenantal loyalty. This means that although the rabbinic laws against the worship of avodah zarah were based on the biblical prohibitions against worshiping other gods, the actual …

"The Clamor Of The People": Popular Support For The Persecution Of Jews In Switzerland And Germany At The Approach Of The Black Death, 1348-1350, Albert Winkler

Faculty Publications

Scholars have recently questioned the role of the lower classes in the persecution of Jews at the advance of the Black Death in Germany 1348-50. However, a careful examination of the many primary sources relating to the persecution of Jews clearly reveals that the lower classes were heavily involved in these pogroms.