Arts and Humanities Commons^™

After Whose Order? Kingship And Priesthood In The Book Of Mormon, Avram R. Shannon

BYU Studies

The Book of Mormon represents itself as a strand of Israelite and Judahite religious tradition that flourished somewhere in the New World. Its acceptance by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as scripture means that the Book of Mormon forms part of the essential worldview of the Church. It certainly informs practice and liturgy in the Church, as the adoption of the sacrament prayers from Moroni 3 and 4 as the regular sacrament prayers for the Church indicates.1 The interpretive road is not one-way, however. Just as the Book of Mormon informs and undergirds much of the teachings …

Marrying Principles Of Religious Freedom With Equitable Teaching Practices For Latter-Day Saint Public Educators, Derek R. Riddle

BYU Studies

A couple of years ago, a colleague recommended I read a young adult novel titled How It Went Down authored by Kekla Magoon. This fictional novel tells the tragic story of Tariq Johnson, a sixteen-year-old fatally shot by a police officer. The story, written from a multicharacter perspective, creates an intentional effect through which the reader may find it challenging to discover the truth about the book’s pivotal event because of the varied perspectives and accounts of its many characters. As a former secondary-school English teacher who taught in settings where conversations regarding police brutality and racial profiling were prevalent, …

Sixty Years Of Byu Studies Quarterly, 1959–2019 The Narrative And The Numbers, Brad Wilcox, Timothy G. Morrison, Kyle C. Lyons, Jake M. Robins

BYU Studies

Publishing for scholarly audiences has a long history. Some propose that the first learned society on record was founded in Toulouse, France, in 1323. The Royal Society of London was established in 1660 and published Europe’s first scholarly journal five years later. In 1848, the American Association for the Advancement of Science published the journal Science, and since that time, the number of academic journals has proliferated. According to Philip G. Altbach and Hans de Wit, over thirty thousand academic journals are in circulation today; Ben Mudrak mentions the appearance of many free open-access journals on the internet since 2006. …

In The Garden, John Alba Cutler

BYU Studies

Tumbling about in nervous flight still getting the feel for the lift— it flutters and keeps to shadow its blue eyes melting into dark. Papilio Machaon, after Asclepius’s son, or swallowtail because of its wings like feathers all geometry and movement the mute beauty of givenness.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Teaching Premodern Women And Gender, Lucy C. Barnhouse

Quidditas

In her influential History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, Judith Bennett asked “Who’s afraid of the distant past?” Fifteen years after this book’s publication, the question remains relevant. Teaching the history of women and gender in the premodern world presents linked pedagogical challenges. Most students enter college with little to no background in premodern history. Many find premodern primary sources, when taught with the same pedagogical scaffolding as modern sources, inaccessible due to real or perceived strangeness. These challenges can be compounded by the challenges of teaching women’s and/or gender history. This roundtable addresses strategies for productive …

The Good, The Bad, And The Violent: Analyzing Beowulf’S Heroic Displacement And Transgressive Violence During The Grendel Quest, Jessie Bonafede

Quidditas

Heroic actions are often associated with altruistic feats of humanitarianism, but in Beowulf, the connection between heroism and performative acts of violence reveal significant complications concerning how the poem codifies violence for social honor. A central conflict arises with the poem’s contrasting presentation of Beowulf’s dominance and physical power before and during the Grendel quest with the relatively low social status he incurs amongst his maternal kin group, the Geats. In this paper, I use anthropological and sociological theories of collective violence and dominance versus prestige hierarchies to rethink how violence interplays with the poem’s treatment of lineage and other …

Contemporary History In Early Tudor English Chronicles: 1485-1553, Barrett L. Beer

Quidditas

English chronicles published between 1485 and 1547 are studied here to determine how they dealt with contemporary history. These chronicles obviously covered the distant past, but many end well before the date of publication. Today contemporary history is of great importance to the public as evidenced by a variety of published works, periodicals, and most recently the internet. An analysis of early Tudor chronicles reveals that while many were indifferent to the recent past, others clearly laid the foundation for a focus on the contemporary era. The recognized authors of the chronicles included in this study are Richard Arnold, John …

What She Said: Recovering Early Modern Women’S Experiences Through Court Records, Jennifer Mcnabb

Quidditas

Much of the fame of early modern England’s church courts today is based on their reputation as “women’s courts.” Because ecclesiastical law allowed women to initiate suit and to be sued in their own names, the courts’ records are full of women’s words. But the task of discovering women’s experiences through these records is a methodologically complex one. Words attributed to women, for example, come to us courtesy of the male church court clerk, whose education and legal experience shaped the written record of legal oral proceedings. And while women filing suit gives the appearance of female agency, it was …

Sir John Cheke, Chamberlain Of The Exchequer, 1552-53, James D. Alsop

Quidditas

The most obscure aspect of Sir John Cheke’s public career is his tenure as a Chamberlain of the English Exchequer. This study confirms that Cheke’s chamberlainship was a sinecure, albeit one of prestige and profit. Attention is also paid to the three rising gentlemen who held office under Cheke: Robert Creswell, Roger Higham, and William Hunwyke.

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

For Our Good, Lindon J. Robison

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

“Know thou, my son, that all these [hard] things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good.” (Doctrine and Covenants 122:7)[1] Our faith can sometimes falter when we face hard times that are difficult to reconcile with a God who loves all his children infinitely and completely, both everywhere and all the time. We may sometimes feel like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, who complained to God, “I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But [sometimes], can’t You choose someone else?”[2] How do we respond to Tevye and others who wonder why hard things happen— …

Latter-Day Houses Of The Lord: Developments In Their Design And Function, Richard O. Cowan

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

This essay traces the modern-day usage and understanding of temples from the Kirtland Temple to Nauvoo and the Salt Lake Temple. Architecture was used to teach principles. While the Kirtland Temple was preparatory (think of the vision of Christ and the conference of keys by Abraham, Moses, Abraham, Elias, and finally Elijah), the Nauvoo Temple was dedicated to ritual usage. In 1879, the Church reduced temple usage to rituals, and thus assembly rooms are missing from later temples. Through his paper, Cowan shows how temples have changed according to revelation and how prophets have seen models in vision that then …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner

Quidditas

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the Breck Award for 2021

Jessie Bonafede

University of New Mexico

There Are Two Sides To Every Story, Keith A. Erekson

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

This article is the fifth chapter in his Real vs. Rumor: How to Dispel Latter-day Myths (Deseret Book, 2021), 62–76. Each chapter introduces a “Thinking Habit” that serves as an antidote to poor thinking. Along the way, the book also identifies applications for daily life in “Everyday Encounter” sidebars and each chapter ends with a summary section that identifies quick ways to identify poor thinking – the “Sniff Tests”—and restates important points from the chapter. Believing (and teaching) that “There Are Two Sides to Every Story” is an unhelpful mental framework—one of the “Myths within Us” that impede our thinking …

Humorous Spaces And Serious Magic In William Baldwin’S Beware The Cat, Ashley Jeanette Ecklund

Quidditas

When spaces transform in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat, the transition is marked with humor, consistently signaling magic to follow. As an amalgamation of folklore, including magic that manifests around, for, and through cats, Baldwin’s work offers adventure, laughter, and danger alike. Some cats are diabolical, worshiping or holding the soul of a witch; however, their wit constitutes a jocular contrast to that of our interior narrator, Maister Streamer, whose quotation above demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of St. Augustine’s beliefs. Though Beware The Cat was published at the start of the early modern period, the folklore it contains speaks …

Be Ye Therefore Loyal, Even As Your Father Which Is In Heaven Is Loyal, Taylor Halverson

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

The scriptures are saturated with covenantal words and terms. Any serious or close reading of the scriptures that misses or ignores the covenantal words, phrases, and literary structure of scripture runs the risk of missing the full purpose of why God preserved the scriptures for us. This is especially true for the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon, which emerged out of an Old Testament cultural context. Research during the past century on ancient Near Eastern covenants has brought clarity to the covenantal meaning and context of a variety of words and literary structures in the Old Testament and …

Mind The Gap What A Learner Needs To Experience To Learn Deeply, Kyle J. Patterson

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

On September 6, 2011, Brigham Young University–Idaho president Kim B. Clark stood before his faculty and staff to detail his view of what learning and teaching should look like when it is done in the Lord’s way. In that setting, President Clark stated, “When I speak of learning today, I speak of it as an increase in the capacity or power to know, to do, and to become.”[1] This learning framework of know, do, and become, while not unique to President Clark,[2] appears to have played an important role in laying the groundwork for what he refers to as “deep …

“Same-Sex Marriage?! What Next Polygamy?”: Mormonism In Us Political Culture, K. Mohrman

Mormon Studies Review

In his dissent to Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision

that determined marriage was a right that could not be constitutionally

denied to same-sex couples under the Free Exercise and

Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, Chief Justice

John Roberts queried, “if ‘[t]here is dignity in the bond between

two men or two women who seek to marry and in their autonomy to

make such profound choices,’ . . . why would there be any less dignity

in the bond between three people, who in exercising their autonomy,

seek to make the profound choice to marry?”1 In …

Margarito Bautista, Mexican Politics, And The Third Convention, Elisa Eastwood Pulido

Mormon Studies Review

In 1935, after a twenty-five-year residency in the United States, Margarito
Bautista, a well-known evangelizer of Mexican and Mexican American
Mormons on both sides of the US-Mexico border, repatriated to Mexico.
Bautista had converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
in central Mexico in 1901. Of particular appeal to Bautista and his family
were Book of Mormon narratives offering an exceptional spiritual identity
to Indigenous Americans as lost members of the House of Israel and
promising them a glorious future destiny. Motivated by a desire to know
more about the religious movement he had joined, Bautista relocated …

Does Being Liberal Push Some Members Out Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints?, Jana Riess, Benjamin Knoll

Mormon Studies Review

Conservative religionists’ political activism is pushing some Americans, particularly younger ones, out of religion altogether. Disgusted by what they see as an unholy merger between the Republican Party and the Religious Right, these people are voting with their feet—not only avoiding Republican affiliation but also wanting nothing to do with organized religion. Such is the argument, at least, of a growing number of scholars and researchers who track the intersection between religion and politics in the United States. Is this claim true? And if so, how does it play out with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day …

Review: Hayes Peter Mauro. Messianic Fulfillments: Staging Indigenous Salvation In America. Lincoln: University Of Nebraska Press, 2019., Sarah Dees

Mormon Studies Review

In Messianic Fulfillments: Staging Indigenous Salvation in America, art historian Hayes Peter Mauro analyzes images of Native Americans and non-Natives produced within the context of evangelical Christian movements in the United States. While some of the images he examines are what we would usually define as “art”—visual works created by artists for aesthetic purposes—he considers other examples of visual culture as well, including historical and scientific illustrations, photographs, and images found in government documents, forty-six of which are reproduced in the text. These images share a common theme: they depict different categories of people—of (Native) American, European, and African descent—and …

Review: Konden Smith Hansen. Frontier Religion: Mormons And Americans, 1857–1907. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2019., Tammy Heise

Mormon Studies Review

Through a series of thought-provoking case studies, Konden Smith Hansen breathes new life into Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous (or, perhaps more accurately, now infamous) “Frontier Thesis” as a paradigm for examining Mormonism as a distinctly American religion. This historical survey revolves around a deft historiographical argument that the Frontier Thesis functioned and, in many respects, continues to function as a religion by defining American national identity and purpose not just for Mormons but for all Americans. Hansen’s attention to Turner’s theory serves to reopen an old frontier for historians of the American West, and by uncovering traditional and innovative forms …

Red Balloon, Paris Nilson

Inscape

I am born in a grocery store for the purpose of something important. The moment of my birth is not a large one, and it is not thought of afterward. I live and die in one breath. Today, as with all coming days, is meant to see how long that initial intake will last me. I am, at every edge, a beginning. I am so round and airy like a globe, it is ironic that I should never have been anywhere. This sudden virility is pregnant with a gaseous content; I am imbued with an upward pull, a magnetic longing. …

Angus Stowe Discusses Scotch, Joshua Gage

Inscape

No abstract provided.

An Anchorite’S Meditation On Water, Chanel Earl

Inscape

Here, water is delivered daily, though sometimes in a single day the sun sets and rises several times. I have learned to catch the rain as it drips through the ceiling, to begin rationing when my bowl is near empty, to clean myself with dust. To never complain.

The Buffet Menu, Caley Abliez

Inscape

No abstract provided.

Interview With Derek Otsuji, Ellie Smith

Inscape

Born on Oahu, Derek N. Otsuji is the author of The Kitchen of Small Hours (SIU Press, 2021), which won the Crab Orchard Poetry Series Open Competition. He is a 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholar (Sewanee Writers’ Conference) and has received awards from Bread Loaf and the Kenyon Review. His poems are widely published in local and national journals, including Bamboo Ridge, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Pleiades, Rattle, The Southern Review, and The Threepenny Review. A 2000 graduate of BYU’s Masters Program in English, he has studied with poets Leslie Norris, Susan Elizabeth Howe, and Lance Larsen.

“There’S Rosemary, That’S For Remembrance:” Suicide Ideation And Portraying Ophelia’S Madness, Ian M. Borden, Sarah Imes Borden

Quidditas

Ophelia’s madness in Hamlet is too often portrayed or understood in a generalized fashion. Historical analysis of the play, as well as historical and recent reviews of Ophelia’s performance show how Ophelia has been considered a character controlled by outside forces, and her madness lacking direction or purpose. Applying the concept of suicide ideation to the character’s actions illuminates both our historical understanding of the character, and provides modern day performers a cohesive and focused model from which to draw.