Arts and Humanities Commons^™

We’Ll Sing And We’Ll Shout: The Life And Times Of W. W. Phelps By Bruce A. Van Orden, Donald Q. Cannon

BYU Studies

Latter-day Saints who know of William W. Phelps tend to associate him with the hymns that he wrote. In fact, the words in the title of Bruce A. Van Orden’s biography, “We’ll Sing and We’ll Shout,” are taken from one of his most famous hymns, “The Spirit of God.” As influential as his hymns have been to Latter-day Saints then and now, Phelps contributed much more than that in his efforts to build the Church. Van Orden’s book is a detailed biography of this interesting and influential writer and Church leader. The book provides insight into both his ecclesiastical contributions …

Seeing Psalms As The Libretti Of A Holy Drama, Janet Ewell

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

Psalms was the favorite Old Testament book at Qumran and in the New Testament; the Book of Mormon contains more than three dozen allusions to Psalms. While Psalms contains both powerful, poetic words of comfort and doctrinal gems, many psalms also seem to careen between praise, warning, comfort, military braggadocio, and humility, sometimes addressing the Lord, sometimes speaking in the voice of the Lord or his prophets. The texts that most strongly exhibit such abrupt shifts may yield greater meaning if they are read as scripts or libretti of a sacred, temple- based drama.

Writing Beyond The Walls: Five Questions To Promote Authentic Writing Experience In The Classroom, Christine C. Thompson

The Utah English Journal

In the fall of 2018, I established the writing objectives in my eighth grade classroom with student and teacher sanity in mind. Heading into my twelfth year of teaching, I was tired of reading predictable, formulaic paragraphs that all but screamed, "This is my topic sentence. Here are my ideas and supporting evidence. And now, let me conclude by restating my topic sentence." Sure, this type of writing is easy to assess; even a computer can grade this structure with moderate accuracy, but there are so many problems with it-problems that generate impersonal pieces lacking in passion, creativity, and risk-taking. …

Scandal, Pop Culture, And Crime In The Classroom: Using Documentaries To Teach Twenty-First-Century Literacy Skills, Johanna Chausow

The Utah English Journal

When two new documentaries appeared on my "Recommended For You" list this past year, I had an epiphany that has enriched my teaching. Fyre Fraud (2019) is a film made for Hulu by Lana Barkin and Julia Nason, while Fyre (2019) was made for Netflix by Chris Smith and Danny Gabai. Both films address the failed music festival in the Bahamas that was heavily promoted by Instagram influencers. The films cover the same topic but present drastically different interpretations of the events leading up to the disaster. While I could never show these documentaries in their entirety to my students …

Trajectories In The Evolution Of Mormon Studies On Faith And Science, Steven L. Peck

Mormon Studies Review

The relationship between science and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been and continues to be a complicated story. Concerns and differing perspectives about science provided the underlying context for a number of formal and informal institutional directions taken by the church in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. Often, these were influenced by differences in opinion about science among various leaders of the church. Areas in which science played a role include: the relationship between secular and church education, a battleground in framing doctrinal questions about creation—including syncretic influence from the rise of Christian fundamentalism and …

Review: Rachel Cope, Amy Easton-Flake, Keith Erekson, And Lisa Olsen Tait, Eds. Mormon Women’S History: Beyond Biography. Madison, Nj: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017., Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp

Mormon Studies Review

“Women shaped Mormonism from its outset.” Simple, isn’t it? With all that scholars now know about the distinctive emphasis on family and childbearing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint tradition, it seems obvious that women have played a crucial role in the development of Mormon history and community life. Yet, as the framing essays in Mormon Women’s History: Beyond Biography so amply demonstrate, the broader narrative histories of the tradition remain willfully fixed on its patriarchal organizational structure and male leadership. Despite an abundance of work in social and cultural history beginning in the 1970s, women’s roles …

Review: Max Perry Mueller. Race And The Making Of The Mormon People. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2017., Brandi Denison

Mormon Studies Review

Max Perry Mueller’s Race and the Making of the Mormon People argues that “for early Mormons, the construction and deconstruction of what it meant to be, to act, and to look black, white, and red were as much literary projects and they were literal ones” (p. 8). Mueller positions his book as both a case study of how nineteenth-century Americans wrote about and constructed race through text as well as a “particular case unto itself” (p. 9). Through the book, Mueller aimed to capture the voices of nonwhite Mormons in the nineteenth century and how they “resisted, acquiesced, and sometimes …

Review: Kerry William Bate. The Women: A Family Story. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2016., Francesca Morgan

Mormon Studies Review

Bate brings the stringent methods of trained historians and scholarly genealogists to bear on the sometimes-fanciful genre of the family genealogy: a publication focusing on only one set of interconnected lineages. His result is a warts-and-all portrayal of everyday life in isolated desert and mountain towns in southern Utah, throughout Mormonism’s f irst century up until the Second World War. His scrutiny of forebears extends to levels of schooling, disease, infant mortality, old age and the end of life, poor financial decision-making, sex before wedlock, and marital tensions. He describes uncongenial personalities when he finds them among his kin. The …

I Dreamed That We Were Sister Wives, Chanel Earl

Inscape

And I wasn't upset in my dream. We wore the long dresses and little white bonnets on our heads. There were children, but I didn't know if they were yours or mine or if they belonged to another woman, who was another sister wife. She was both present and not present all at once, and I think I knew her a long time ago, but maybe she was just a made-up dream person.

Gail Enough, Gail Roberts

Inscape

According to the U.S. Social Security database, the name ''.Abigail" as a female first name has been in the top 1000 names used every single year since 1901. It's been consistently in the top 10 and top 20 since 1998. In fact, 0.8% of female babies born in 2005 were named

Abigail.

Who Is Leaving The Church?, Stephen Cranney

BYU Studies

Who is leaving the Church? The blogosphere and informal ward council discussions have no shortage of speculation on this point, but there is surprisingly very little representative research to help shed light on this issue in a clear, systematic way. Because members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make up a small fraction of the total population, most random surveys that ask about religion and former religion pick up only a handful of people with a Latter-day Saint background or affiliation in any wave. (For example, the 2016 General Social Survey reported only twenty-three members.) Numbers like …

Name As Key-Word: Collected Essays On Onomastic Wordplay And The Temple In Mormon Scripture By Matthew L. Bowen, Jennifer Hurlbut

BYU Studies

The ancient world’s use of names to represent meanings, symbols, prophecies, and memorials is foreign to us today, and Matthew Bowen’s book bridges that gap to tell us what we can learn from understanding the use of names in ancient scriptural narratives. The volume’s sixteen essays delve into the names of persons and places in the Book of Mormon and Bible. Bowen’s thorough and careful research into these names provides helpful background for these scriptural texts: for example, the essay on the place names Zarahemla and Jershon draws parallels between these names and a naming practice in the Bible seen …

Doing Business In The World Without Becoming Worldly, Lindon J. Robison, David R. Just, Jeffery R. Oliver

BYU Studies

Doing business in the world consists of, among other things, exchanging goods and services. One way people reflect who they are and what they love most is by what they exchange and by the quantities and terms with which they exchange goods and services.

Anchor & Marker, Annie Wing

Inscape

No abstract provided.

Slump, Samuel Everett

Inscape

No abstract provided.

Allen D. Breck Award

Quidditas

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

Recipient of the Allen D. Breck Award for 2019

BRETTON RODRIGUEZ

Eroticism As A Metaphor For The Human-Divine Relationhip In Attar’S Conference Of The Birds, Or Mantiqu’T-Tair, Marisa Sikes

Quidditas

Farídu’d-Dín Ἁṭṭār’s The Speech of the Birds employs transgressive erotic imagery in multiple sub-tales in ways that both enhance the frame tale’s significance and suggest that persistent, discrete categories of love poetry and religious poetry are untenable as far as Ἁṭṭār’s works are concerned. Eroticism in Ἁṭṭār’s work paradoxically elicits shock and supports orthodoxy, sometimes simultaneously. In the narrative of Shaikh-i Sam’ān religious taboos are broken by a Muslim shaikh devoted to a Christian beloved who spurns him continuously. In “The Princess and the Beautiful Slave-Boy” eroticism is overtly presented as a metaphor for temporary, ecstatic union with the divine. …

Contents

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Juggling The Curriculum: Integrating Vocabulary Into The Rhythms And Routines Of Our Classrooms, Rachel Knecht

The Utah English Journal

At the end of my third year of teaching, I finally felt like I was successfully juggling the many moving parts of an English curriculum. Literature units focused on an essential question? Check! Daily routines including Writer's Notebooks and independent reading? Check, check! Writing units using mentor texts, authentic audiences, and grammar in context? Check, check, and check! And, through all of these practices, I believed I was on my way to creating a student-centered classroom where students' voices, backgrounds, and skills were valued.

I had this English teacher thing down! Or at least I thought I did. There was …

Using Chronotypes In Literature To Enhance Student Perspectives, Heather Fitzgerald Jorgensen

The Utah English Journal

"How do I draw a picture of democracy?" a seventh grader asked. "I know it's a noun."

"That's a good question," I said, stalling for time. It was my first year teaching at a school in the intermountain west, where seventh graders had grammar instruction every Tuesday.

"Why don't you try drawing a symbol of democracy?" I asked. "Like the American flag or Lady Liberty."

"That works," the student said.

Bending Back To Move Forward: Scaffolding Reflection To Develop Student Authors, Liz Thackeray Nelson

The Utah English Journal

When I was teaching high school language arts courses, I used a four-corners activity at the beginning of every year in order to get a quick glimpse of my students' attitudes toward writing. Each corner of the classroom represented a point on a Likert scale: strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, and strongly disagree. I read statements about writing ( such as "I avoid writing whenever possible" or "I like writing my ideas down") and then students moved to the corner that best matched their view. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the majority of students stayed in the …

Book Review: Being The Change, Whitney Hansen

The Utah English Journal

In Being the Change, Sara Ahmed pleads with teachers to seek out and encourage difficult conversations in their classrooms. She acknowledges the fears many teachers associate with bringing up political debates and current events to their students but contends that these conversations are vital for our students. Through classroom conversations and personal stories, she lays out the current political situation that our students are facing. With this tumultuous setting, she pleads that we must teach our students how to talk to one another and, more importantly, how to disagree with one another. Through these disagreements, Ahmed asserts that students …

Book Review: Shout, Kara Trammell

The Utah English Journal

Laurie Halse Anderson's latest book Shout

is "the true story of a survivor who

refused

to be silent."

Book Review: Illegal, Lisa Jones

The Utah English Journal

Ebo's sister has already fled Ghana for a better life in Europe, and now his brother Kwame has disappeared on the same quest to help his family. As much as Ebo appreciates these efforts, he refuses to be left behind once again-especially as Ebo and his siblings are orphaned. Thus, Illegal shows the dangerous journey of a refugee to find his brother and eventually make it to Europe. Told in the form of a beautiful graphic novel, Ebo must cross the brutal Sahara Desert to the dangerous city of Tripoli and eventually travel across the ocean. In each situation, Ebo …

Book Review: The 57 Bus: A True Story Of Two Teenagers And The Crime That Changes Their Lives, Albert Ricci

The Utah English Journal

Dashka Slater pulls her information from various sources-"interviews, documents, letters, videos, diaries, social media posts, and public records" -to craft her nonfiction account of two teenagers whose lives collide one innocent day on November 4, 2013, on the 57 bus. "If it weren't for the 57 bus, Richard and Sasha would never have met. Although they live in the same city, Oakland, they are from radically different worlds. But one single reckless act changes both of their lives forever." Sasha is a senior at Maybeck High School, they love Russian literature, live-action role-playing, the color purple, and skirts: they are …

Book Review: Circe, Tara Pina

The Utah English Journal

The story of Odysseus and his adventures home to Ithaca is familiar one: one that is taught and read in many classrooms, and one that is adapted and borrowed from often. However, Circe by Madeline Miller does not simply retell this familiar story, instead she shifts the well-known tale to focus on the minor goddess Circe. Miller gives a glimpse into Circe's life that is so moving it will change how you look at the story of Odysseus and surely how you approach it with students.

Book Review: Internment, Leah Smith

The Utah English Journal

Internment by Samira Ahmed is an excellent example of realistic fiction that helps students really engage with their political, social, and personal beliefs. Those who find themselves in a minority group will relate well to the themes and characters, and those who are more privileged will find their eyes opened.

Book Review: Pitch Dark, Madison Sheldrake

The Utah English Journal

Pitch Dark is a futuristic story of adventure and survival, set in motion after humanity deems Earth to be uninhabitable and takes to the stars to save both themselves and their future. The book takes place in space, showing events on two spacecrafts that come together in an effort to learn from the past as the characters look to secure their future. However, unbeknownst to most of the crew members, a secret terrorist plot is underway to undermine humanity's last chance to colonize Mars.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

From The Editor, Steven C. Harper

BYU Studies

I have some exciting announcements to make in this inaugural issue of volume 58. First, I am delighted to announce that Susan Howe has been named associate editor of BYU Studies. Susan served previously on our Arts and Sciences Board. She is a poet and an emerita faculty member of the BYU English Department. Her most recent poetry collection, Salt, was published by Signature Books in 2013, and her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Shenandoah, and other journals. She received the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association for Mormon Letters. She is a reviewer …