Contributors

Kimberly M. Berkey is a graduate student in philosophy of religion at Harvard Divinity School. Prior to graduate work, she studied as a Hinckley Scholar at Brigham Young University, and she has contributed several articles to Maxwell Institute publications, including Studies in the Bible and Antiquity and the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.

Julie A. P. Frederick teaches part-time in Brigham Young University’s Department of Ancient Scripture. She earned an MA in comparative studies from BYU. She resides in Spanish Fork, Utah, with her husband, Nick, and their three children.

George B. Handley is professor of interdisciplinary humanities and associate dean of the College of Humanities at Brigham Young University. He holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include Postslavery Literatures in the Americas and New World Poetics. His current book project is tentatively entitled From Chaos to Cosmos: Literature as Ecotheology. He is also completing an environmentally themed novel entitled American Fork.

Grant Hardy is professor of history and religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He is the editor of The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition and the author of Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide along with two books on early Chinese history. His most recent publications include the Oxford History of Historical Writing, Vol. 1; Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition; and Sacred Texts of the World (the last two are 36-lecture CD/DVD courses produced by the Teaching Company).

Heather Hardy earned an MBA from Brigham Young University and worked for several years in university administration at Yale and BYU before leaving the workforce to raise children and pursue a life of learning. She has published essays on the Book of Mormon in Dialogue, the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, and The Things Which My Father Saw: Approaches to Lehi’s Dream and Nephi’s Vision (from the 40th Sperry Symposium at BYU). She resides with her husband, Grant Hardy, in Asheville, North Carolina.

Joseph M. Spencer received his PhD in philosophy from the University of New Mexico and is currently an adjunct instructor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He is the author of An Other Testament and For Zion. He serves as the associate director of the Mormon Theology Seminar and as an associate editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.

Jenny Webb lives in Huntsville, Alabama, with her husband, Nick, and children. She has an MA in comparative literature from Brigham Young University and works as an editor and production manager for several academic journals. Her work on scripture has appeared in the volumes Perspectives on Mormon Theology: Scriptural Theology and An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32. She is the current president of Mormon Scholars in the Humanities and serves on the Mormon Theology Seminar Executive Board.