CONTRIBUTORS

LIBBY POTTER BOSS {[email protected]} has worked in marketing and audience development for several performing arts organizations, in- cluding the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College in Los An- geles and Gateway to the Arts in Pittsburgh. She holds a master’s degree in arts management from Carnegie Mellon University and currently lives in Belmont, Massachusetts, with her husband, Scott, and their three chil- dren. MATTHEW B. BOWMAN {[email protected]} is associate editor of Dialogue and visiting assistant professor of religion at Hampden- Sydney College, Hampden-Sydney, Virginia. His book, The Mormon Peo- ple:TheMakingofanAmericanFaith, was published in January 2012 by Random House. SCOTT CAMERON earned his Ph.D. in English from Boston University and currently teaches English at –Idaho. He re- ceived awards for his poetry from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes in 2009 and 2010. DAVID CAMPBELL {[email protected]} is a Dialogue subscriber and professor of political science at Notre Dame. With Robert D. Putnam, he co-authored American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012). SHANNONCASTLETONhaspublishedpoemsinjournalssuchas Northwest Review, Crab Orchard Review, Ellipsis,andLiterature and Belief. She has taught writing classes at Brigham Young University, Salt Lake Community College, and Westminster College, where she also worked as the advisor to the literary magazine, Ellipsis.Currently,Shannonlivesin the Philadelphia area with her husband and their four daughters. ROBERT ELDER {[email protected]} is Lilly Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer in and history at Valparaiso University in Valpar- aiso, Indiana. He is currently finishing a book on evangelicalism and honor culture in the antebellum American South. He received his Ph.D. in American history from Emory University in 2011. STEVE EVANS {[email protected]}, an attorney living in Wiscon- sin, is a founder of the Mormon group By Common Consent. RUSSELL ARBEN FOX {[email protected]} is review co-editor of Dia- logue and associate professor of political science at Friends University, Wichita, Kansas. ELIZABETH GARCIA lives with her husband in Atlanta, Georgia, where she taught literature and composition for six years before deciding to write poetry full-time until children come along. Her poems have ap-

200 Contributors 201 peared in Borderline, Segullah, Eudaimonia Poetry Review,andIrreantum, which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize. She also serves as an associate editor for FutureCycle Press, as assistant editor for the Georgia Poetry So- ciety’s Reach of Song, and on the poetry board for Segullah. JAMES GOLDBERG {[email protected]} was a founding member of New Play Project and a coordinator of the Mormon Lit Blitz. With his wife, Nicole Wilkes Goldberg, he recently co-founded the online literary venue Everyday Mormon Writer. His works have recently ap- peared in Shofar, Drash, Irreantum, The Best of 2009,andJattan Da Pracheen Ithas. His 2009 MFA thesis was the first in Brigham Young University’s history to be written in and about blog form. KRISTINE L. HAGLUND {[email protected]} is editor of Di- alogue. ANGELA HALLSTROM {[email protected]} is the author of the novel Bound on Earth (Parables, 2008) and editor of the short story col- lection Dispensation: Latter-Day Fiction (Orem, Utah: Zarahemla Books, 2010). She holds an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and serves on the editorial boards of Irreantum and Segullah.Sheliveswithher husband and four children in Wood- bury, Minnesota. GRANT HARDY {[email protected]} is a professor of history and reli- gious studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He has pub- lished books on early Chinese history, as well as the : A Reader’s Edition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003) and Under- standing the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2010). His recent publications include the Oxford History of His- torical Writing, Vol. 1, co-edited with Andrew Feldherr (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2011) and Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition (a thirty-six-lecture course on both DVD and audio CD, pro- duced and distributed by The Great Courses, 2011). This essay is a revised and updated version of one posted at By Common Consent, Feb- ruary 15, 2011. HEIDI HARRIS {[email protected]} currently lives in Germany and teaches American studies at the University of Rostock. She received her graduate degree from Boston University in nineteenth-century Am- erican history, literature, and gender theology. RONAN HEAD {[email protected]} oversees religious education at an Anglican cathedral school in England, leads the Ancient Law Collec- tions Online project (anelaws.byu.edu), and is active in various endeavours. ANNE LAZENBY {[email protected]} is a sophomore at Brig- 202 DIALOGUE: AJOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT, 45, no. 2 (Summer 2012) ham Young University studying mathematics. She grew up in Belmont, Massachusetts, as the oldest of five children. MAX PERRY MUELLER {maxabelg.com} is associate editor of Religion & Politics. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. His writing has appeared in the Journal of Mormon History, The Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, The New Re- public, Slate, and Religion Dispatches. He holds a bachelor of arts from Carleton College, in addition to a master of theological studies from Har- vard University. BENJAMIN E. PARK {[email protected]} is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Cambridge where he focuses on the cul- tural, religious, and intellectual history of early America. He thanks Mark Ashurst-McGee, Matthew Bowman, Rachel Cope, Matthew J. Grow, Kris- tine L. Haglund, Robin Scott Jensen, Christopher C. Jones, Patrick Q. Ma- son, Jonathan A. Stapley, and John Turner for substantive critiques on earlier drafts. A version of this paper was presented in a forum with the Jo- seph Smith Papers Project staff, and appreciation is herein expressed to all those who provided helpful feedback, especially Jill Mulvay Derr and Andrew H. Hedges. ELISA PULIDO has an MFA in writing from the School of the Art Insti- tute of Chicago and is currently finishing coursework for a doctoral de- gree in Religions of North America at Claremont Graduate University’s School of Religion. In 2010, she organized a Religions in Conversation Conference at Claremont Graduate University on the them, “Poetry and Religion—Finding Religious Realities through Sacred Verse.” The confer- ence brought together scholars, poets, and performers of liturgical verse from eight world religions. She served an LDS mission in the Switzerland Zurich Mission and is currently a Church service missionary to the San Clemente Stake Singles Ward. WILL REGER was born and raised in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. He be- gan writing poetry in his seventh grade P.E. class to entertain his friends and never quite stopped. He earned bachelor’s degrees in Russian lan- guage and literature and European studies from Brigham Young Univer- sity and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in medieval Russian history. He is currently a professor of history at the Illinois State University and lives in Champaign, Illinois, with his wife, Mary, and their two youngest children. JOHN W. SCHOUTEN is a poet, a novelist, a consumer researcher, and a marketing professor at the University of Portland. He has authored two books to date: a textbook, Sustainable Marketing (New York: Prentice Hall, Contributors 203

2011), and a novel, Notes from the Lightning God (Langley, British Colum- bia: BeWrite Books, 2009). RUTH A. STARKMAN {[email protected]} and her husband, Rus- sell A. Berman, have four children. In 1997–98 she was a visiting assistant professor of German at the University of Utah. Currently, she teaches col- lege writing and biomedical ethics at Stanford University. DOUG TALLEY received a BFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University and a J.D. from the University of Akron. Early in his ca- reer he practiced law with a firm in Akron, Ohio, and presently works as an executive in a small consulting company. His poems and essays have ap- peared in various literary journals, including The American Scholar, Chris- tianity and Literature,andIrreantum. In 2009, his work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poetry collection, Adam’s Dream, was released in 2011 (Woodsboro, Md.: Parables Publishing). He and his wife, April, live in Copley, Ohio, where they both continue to write and raise their family. STEPHEN C. TAYSOM {[email protected]} is a professor of the his- tory of religion at Cleveland State University. His published works include Shakers, Mormons and Religious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested Bound- aries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), and an edited collec- tion titled Dimensions of Faith: A Mormon Studies Reader (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2011). TERRESA WELLBORN is a bricoleur, librarian, and cartographer of words. She has a B.A. in English literature from Brigham Young Univer- sity and a MLIS degree from San Jose State University. Her writing has ap- peared in Segullah and Monsters and Mormons and is forthcoming in In- scape.