Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Gender And Madness In Victorian Britain, Amy Milne-Smith

History Faculty Publications

For decades, the history of gender and madness was a story about women. Individuals deemed lunatics were universally treated as passive victims of medio-legal forces beyond their control. New generations of scholars have looked beyond power binaries to interrogate the complex network of gender, class, family, and culture to place ‘the mad’ as historical actors in a complex and often contradictory story. This article reflects on some major themes in the British historiography of Victorian gender and madness since the mid-20th century. It highlights how feminist and anti-psychiatrist interdisciplinary works inspired new generations of historians to place gender at the …

Dictionary Of Proper Names & Foreign Words In The Book Of Mormon, Stephen D. Ricks, Paul Y. Hoskisson, Robert F. Smith, John Gee

Interpreter Foundation Books

This Dictionary of Proper Names and Foreign Words in the Book of Mormon represents the culmination of more than a decade of study and discussion of the origins and meanings of Book of Mormon names. Those discussions took place regularly at Brigham Young University’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship under the leadership of Professor Paul Y. Hoskisson, director of the Laura F. Willis Center for Book of Mormon Studies. They resulted in the electronic “Book of Mormon Onomasticon.”1 All of the collaborators on this volume—John Gee, Paul Y. Hoskisson, Stephen D. Ricks, and Robert F. Smith—have been trained …

The Inspired Author’S Intent Building Our Scholarship To Learn By Study And Also By Faith, Shad Anderson

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

In our devotional teaching, we are fairly successful in helping students ask questions about what the scriptures they are studying mean to them. Students asking these types of questions may produce thoughtful insights. But does seeking what a scripture means to a student, devoid of a real understanding of what the ancient author originally intended, do enough to help our students truly engage with and fully access the power of the scriptures in their lives? My purpose with this paper is to make the case that it generally does not. When our students understand the scripture author’s original intent, I …

God Is Not Fragile Coping With The Intensity Of Hosea’S Imagery And Life’S Most Severe Challenges, Seth N. Hord

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

The book of Hosea is not for the faint of heart. Like many of the writings of ancient Israelite prophets, it is complex and intense and deserves a focused, serious study to fully appreciate the intensity of Hosea’s message. Anything less may leave the reader somewhat confused or even scarred by what Hosea says about God. But Hosea’s message is particularly powerful in helping us deal with life’s most intense and troubling circumstances. This paper attempts to address some of the striking images of Hosea in a way that will assist religious educators with helping students navigate some of the …

Reanchoring Our Purpose To Jesus Christ, Clark G. Gilbert, Scott C. Esplin, Jared W. Ludlow, Barbara Morgan Gardner

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Esplin: Thank you for your willingness to share your thoughts and insights with us. For some who may be unaware of your background, will you introduce yourself to our readers. Gilbert: I really feel like the Lord planted experiences in my life from my very earliest years that had a purpose in Him. I would not have known the significance of many of those experiences until just in the last decade. I grew up in a home where education, and Church education in particular, were highly valued. Both my parents graduated from BYU. Both my parents have law degrees. From …

Time And Intensity Growth Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints In Greece, Mary Jane Woodger

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

In the late 1970s, missionary work was reinstated in Greece after Latter-day Saint missionaries not having been in the nation for nearly one hundred years because of political unrest. In time Greece became part of the Austria Vienna East Mission, which covered much of Eastern Europe, with Dennis B. Neuenschwander as mission president (1987–1991). In 2019, while reflecting on his service, Neuenschwander discussed an inherent relationship between intensity and time: “Some of our experiences can be very intense, focused in a relatively short period of time. However, the consequences, implications, and applicability of such powerful experiences and moments must often …

Highlights From The Spring 2022 Prospective Missionary Devotional, Marcus B. Nash

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

This article is a transcription of the Spring 2022 Prospective Missionary Devotional featuring Elder Marcus B. Nash of the Seventy, with two future missionaries, Hannah Bingham and Carter Boswell, serving as hosts. The semiannual Prospective Missionary Devotional is presented by BYU Religious Education and the Utah Valley Institute of Religion. During the devotional, Elder Nash asked several current and future missionaries to answer questions about their experiences and the challenges they were facing. Following this portion, Elder Nash answered questions that the audience had submitted. The devotional concluded with Elder Nash giving prospective missionaries some crucial tips on how to …

"Knocking On People's Computers" Missionary Work In The Digital Age, Scott L. Howell, Liberty Howell, Camellia Hill

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

The missionary purpose of bringing souls unto Christ will never change, but the methods of sharing it will. Over fifty years ago, President Harold B. Lee taught that “the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ are divine. Nobody changes the principles and [doctrine] of the Church except the Lord by revelation. But methods change as the inspired direction comes to those who preside at a given time.”[1] In a recent Church News podcast, Elder Brent H. Nielson of the Presidency of the Seventy reminded us that “no matter the method we use to do missionary work: Whether it’s a …

Representing The Ali'i And Monarchy: Dress, Diplomacy, And Featherwork In Hawai'i, Tess Anderson

Scripps Senior Theses

When Native Hawaiians and haole (foreigners) first met, both participants belonged to fashion systems unknown to the other, composed of different materials, styles, tastes, standards, and construction techniques. As the outside world was introduced to the cultural heritage of Hawaiian hulu manu (featherwork), kūkaulani (chiefly fashion), and European skewed conceptions of Hawaiian indigeneity; the ali‘i (chiefs) and kama‘āina (commoners) received and adapted to incoming materials, technologies, and information. When these encounters transitioned into “prolonged contact” and settlement, dress and adornment proliferated in new ways. Analyzing the case studies of historic pā‘ū, holokū, ‘ahu'ula, and military uniforms shows the significance of …

Re-Imagining Design For Affordable Housing In Mexico, Kenza Fernandez Dominguez

Scripps Senior Theses

Since the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, affordable housing developments in Mexico have been produced in a massive, unsustainable scale. The speed at which these developments are produced equates to the carelessness that goes into their planning. At large, the developments’ monotonous design is aesthetically dehumanizing and fails to promote a sense of community. These developments lack basic infrastructure, and their residents have abandoned them, which has incentivized increased criminal activity.

In this paper, I will be looking at successful models of affordable housing globally, exploring the histories of communal living, and function of architectural collages. Based on my findings, …

Re-Imagining Design For Affordable Housing In Mexico, Kenza Fernandez Dominguez

Scripps Senior Theses

Since the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, affordable housing developments in Mexico have been produced in a massive, unsustainable scale. The speed at which these developments are produced equates to the carelessness that goes into their planning. At large, the developments’ monotonous design is aesthetically dehumanizing and fails to promote a sense of community. These developments lack basic infrastructure, and their residents have abandoned them, which has incentivized increased criminal activity.

In this paper, I will be looking at successful models of affordable housing globally, exploring the histories of communal living, and function of architectural collages. Based on my findings …

Visualizing An Anti-Capitalist Future Amidst A Commodified Landscape: Learning From The African Savanna Elephant, Eloise Magoncelli

Scripps Senior Theses

An ongoing evolution of commodified elephants has shaped the way contemporary conservation theory approaches the species’ role in human-wildlife ecosystems today. This process has made their survival seemingly contingent upon capitalism, their value often higher than the humans they neighbor, and resolutions to ivory trade-related problems complicated by sources of profit, exploitation, and colonial-era structures of power. Must this be the case?

Interview With K.A. Hays, Ariel Hochstrasser

Inscape

K.A. Hays’ most recent book is Anthropocene Lullaby (February 2022, Carnegie Mellon). She is the author of three prior books of poetry: Windthrow (2017), Early Creatures, Native Gods (2012) and Dear Apocalypse (2009). Her poems appear widely in journals and have been selected for two editions of Best American Poetry. Born in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, she earned an MFA from Brown University. She teaches Creative Writing at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA, and directs the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets, a 3-week all-expenses paid summer writing retreat and conference for undergraduate poets from any university or college in the United States.

Winter 2022 Editor’S Note, Kath Richards

Inscape

Everything is an attempt. My friend taught this concept to me last year, pointing to my favorite novel (the one I cherish above all others, the Holy Grail of books as far as I am concerned) and said simply, “That was just an attempt by the author. It’s all attempts.”

Review: Sondra G. Jones. Being And Becoming Ute: The Story Of An American Indian People. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2019., Elise Boxer

Mormon Studies Review

Sondra G. Jones’s Being and Becoming Ute: The Story of an American Indian People is the first comprehensive history of the Núu-ci, or “The People” (8). It is a cultural biography and history of the Núu-ci people that begins with their creation story and moves through hundreds of years of Núu-ci history. Jones highlights the resiliency and adaptation of a people from contact and into the twenty-first century. Ute survivance in the twenty-first century is the result of their ability to respond and adapt to external forces that advocated for their removal and erasure. Being and Becoming Ute spans over …

Pedro And Pita Built Peter Priesthood’S Mansion And Now They Work The Grounds: Whose Masc Does “The Lamanite” Wear?, Arcia Tecun

Mormon Studies Review

The 2001 film The Other Side of Heaven is a dramatization based on John H. Groberg’s book In the Eye of the Storm, featuring his time as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS Church) in the Kingdom of Tonga, where he was renamed Kolipoki.1 Kolipoki is a White missionary from the United States who is initially assigned to work together with a Brown Indigenous companion Feki Pōuha. Feki cares for and protects his pālangi (foreign) companion by teaching him the language as well as serving as his guide into local culture and customs. …

Review: Benjamin E. Park. Kingdom Of Nauvoo: The Rise And Fall Of A Religious Empire On The American Frontier. New York: Liveright, 2020., Christopher Childers

Mormon Studies Review

Benjamin E. Park’s Kingdom of Nauvoo integrates social, cultural, and political history to explain how the Mormon movement sought to build a community of believers on the western frontier and how the experiment at Nauvoo ultimately failed. This experiment, a radical reinvention of Christianity based on the revelations of a charismatic religious figure—Joseph Smith—and the building of a community of like-minded believers, reveals much about the history of the early American republic. Kingdom of Nauvoo shows how Smith’s church evolved in the context of early nineteenth-century America and how the structure of early American society struggled to deal with movements …

Review: William L. Davis. Visions In A Seer Stone: Joseph Smith And The Making Of The Book Of Mormon. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2020., Carolyn Eastman

Mormon Studies Review

William L. Davis has published an astoundingly good book, one of the best works of religious and intellectual history I have read in years. Visions in a Seer Stone engages a range of academic fields, historical methods, and exegetical close readings in examining the development of the Book of Mormon, and above all helps his readers understand the dynamics of American religious culture during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. In the end, he develops an argument impressive for both its conceptual rigor and its sweeping breadth: that the Book of Mormon is less a conventional text than an oral performance, and that …

Review: Gordon Shepherd And Gary Shepherd. Jan Shipps: A Social And Intellectual Portrait. Salt Lake City: Kofford Books, 2019., Amy Hoyt

Mormon Studies Review

As a young graduate student at Claremont, I was excited to meet Jan Shipps when she came to deliver a public lecture on Mormonism on campus. A few of us graduate students were asked to bring her to the event from her hotel room on the evening of the lecture. My overall impression of her was that she was down to earth, funny, and quick. And perhaps a little intimidating. I noticed that she was able to talk to anyone about anything and, at the same time, command the room when needed. After reading the biography of Jan Shipps by …

Reflections On The New Latter-Day Saint Temple In Bengaluru And Religious Gender Norms, Debjani Chakravarty

Mormon Studies Review

There was recent publicity in Utah press about the new Mormon temple that will be built in Bengaluru, India (known as Bangalore until 2014), the first temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the country. There was a groundbreaking ceremony in December 2020, yet a survey of leading English-language newspapers in India reveals that this event was not widely reported. It was certainly not as widely reported as the groundbreaking of another temple in August 2020: the Ram Mandir, or the Ram Temple, which has been a violently contentious issue in India for the last three …

Review: Joanna Brooks. Mormonism And White Supremacy: American Religion And The Problem Of Racial Innocence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020., Nichole Renée Phillips

Mormon Studies Review

Race and religion scholar Joanna Brooks offers an atypical treatment of the imbrication of anti-Black racism and American Christianity in her book, Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence. While treatment of the subject is influenced by her background and membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, readers are given new language and the vocabulary to dissect and understand White supremacy and White racial privilege, particularly regarding how it has infiltrated and operated in the American Christian church. Brooks accomplishes this through content analysis of rare but significant documents and a historical …

Contemporary Femininities In Mormonism And In Ireland: Challenging And Confirming Essentialism In Online Spaces, Hazel O'Brien

Mormon Studies Review

How are gender identities negotiated within Irish Mormonism, and does this intersect with trends identifiable within Mormonism more generally? In this paper I use the examples of modern Ireland and modern Mormonism to speculate regarding the nature of gendered identities online. I suggest that Irish and Mormon cultures are both confronting serious challenges to traditional essentialist interpretations of femininity that have long dominated their cultural landscapes. I also suggest that social media (SM) and online spaces are facilitating these challenges. However, I observe that online spaces are also used in Irish Mormonism to conform to hegemonic Mormon understandings of gender …

Interview With Amy Leach, Fleur Van Woerkom

Inscape

Amy Leach grew up in Texas and earned her MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and numerous other publications, including Granta, A Public Space, Orion, Tin House, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Her books are Things That Are and The Everybody Ensemble. Leach lives in Bozeman and teaches creative writing at MSU.

Racial Spatial Relationships In Claudia Rankine’S Citizen, Thomas Jenson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine addresses topics from segregation to police brutality to indicate the extreme spatial relationships between racial groups. Her work reveals the geographic mechanisms that confine African Americans to certain locations as well as the coerce them to violently share space with their white counterparts. Drawing upon spatial theory, which exposes the structures of unjust geography, my analysis also considers language as an additional spatial force that harms the black community as much as more physical phenomena.

Rise And Run Latter-Day Saint Women And Good Government, Susan R. Madsen

BYU Studies

Thomas Jefferson believed that “the care of human life & happiness, & not their destruction, is the first & only legitimate object of good government.” According to Elder Wilford W. Andersen of the Seventy, one of the ways good government cares for human life and happiness is when it “protects religion and fosters religious freedom. And good religion encourages good citizenship and adherence to the law of the land.” If we are to ensure that human life, happiness, and religious freedom will thrive and be protected in the years ahead, women must be active in government. Women’s participation is essential …

Muster, Darlene Young

BYU Studies

It’s not that she’s been silent until now, though those who haven’t trained themselves to hear the creak of mountains, work of wind, might claim she hasn’t had a voice. It’s that she knows the power of slow growth, of listening.

Inequality And Narrative In The Book Of Mormon, Robert F. Schwartz

BYU Studies

speak unto you as if ye were present,” writes Moroni, “and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing” (Morm. 8:35). Eyewitnesses to the end of their civilization, Moroni and his father, Mormon, address us, their modern readers, from the perspective of exiled visionaries. Like twentieth-century exiles Hannah Arendt or Czesław Miłosz, these editors and part-authors of the Book of Mormon write as refugees from a society in utter, violent collapse, left to piece together a narrative of how things came to such a bitter end and what the future …

"None That Doeth Good", Walker Wright, Don Bradley

BYU Studies

The First Vision has been a center of both faith and controversy. While millions of Latter-day Saints affirm it as the beginning of the Restoration, others see it as an ever-growing fish tale. The multiple accounts of the First Vision vary in detail, with Joseph Smith’s earliest written account (1832) lacking some of the elements found in his later accounts. However, some of these elements—particularly the appearance of God the Father as part of the First Vision experience—are laced throughout Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible. These historical threads ultimately culminate in his translation of Psalm 14, which weaves together …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.