Claremont Mormon Studies j NEWSLETTERi FALL 2009 t ISSUE NO . 1 Impressions of Claremont IN THIS ISSUE BY Richard L. Bushman Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies, Claremont Graduate University iThe Year Ahead PAGE 2 laudia and I came to Claremont for something just out of reach but k primarily for adventure, and desirable. C Women’s Oral History we have not been disappointed. For Our only regret is that our adven- PAGE 3 all the heavy lifting in researching ture costs the students so much. It and writing, preparing classes, and takes a miracle everyday to pay the k criticizing students’ work, there is huge cost of tuition and support not a strong element of play. It is fun just one life, but in many cases two Past Events PAGE 4 to talk about or more. There imponder- is something k able ques- positively me- tions like dieval about Karen Torjesen on the nature the asceticism Mormon Studies at of religion. attached to Claremont PAGE 4 It is en- the study of tertaining religion at to work Claremont. k through I hope that the the combina- In the Lifeboat with a religious tion of learn- Tiger PAGE 6 delib- ing and hard- erations of ship will form people long us into a band of since dead. What is more exhilarat- brothers and sisters. Learning in the ing than a seminar discussion that Latter-day Saint tradition is meant to takes off? be fraternal. We pledge ourselves to CGU MORMON We like the feel of the buildings each other as well as to our studies. STUDIES ON and the campus. The dappling of We teach one another out of the best iTUNES U sunshine and shade playing on the books. k walls gives everything a cool, invit- Claudia and I feel privileged to Claremont Graduate University and ing demeanor. Our office is light be part of this grand enterprise, and the School of Religion have added and airy, the way we would like our our association with this collection lectures and other presentations teaching to be. We like the students, of striving scholars is the part we to iTunes U. Some of our Mormon everyone with a story and a sharply like most of all. t Studies events are now available in etched personality. All are striving this collection. Visit http://bit.ly/cgu-on-itunes to subscribe and download audio tracks. PAGE 1 HTTP://RELIGION.CGU.EDU t HTTP://RSC.CGU.EDU/CMSSA CLAREMONT MORMON STUDIES NEWSLETTER t FALL 2009 The Year Ahead The response to last year’s Mormon Studies lecture and conference series has encouraged the program to line up another group of eminent speakers. No single theme has dictated the selection; the governing principle has been to get the best we could find. —R. BUSHMAN SEPTEMBER 24 Edwards Papers and a member of the National Advisory Board for the Joseph Smith Papers. He is uniquely Daniel Walker Howe qualified to compare these two giants of American "Joseph Smith's America" religious history. k Daniel Howe is author of the Pulitzer Prize winning history, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of FEBRUARY 18 America, 1815-1848, and Professor of History Emeritus at UCLA. He was Rhodes Professor of American History at Grant Hardy Oxford University from 1992 to 2002. Howe was born in Ogden, Utah, and knows Mormons well. "Reading the Book of Mormon" k Grant Hardy, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Asheville, is best known to OcTOBER 22 Mormons for The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition, Father Alexei Smith and but he soon will be better known for his structural analysis of the Book of Mormon coming out with Oxford Robert L. Millet University Press next year. Hardy explains how the three major historians in the book, Nephi, Mormon, and Catholic–Dialogue on Moroni constructed their narratives differently, making Priesthood and Sacraments each of these writers a distinctive presence in the book. k Father Alexei Smith, the priest in charge of inter- faith dialogue for the Los Angeles diocese will represent MARCH 18 Catholicism, and representatives of the LDS community will speak for Mormonism. There will be an informal Daniel C. Peterson afternoon conversation and a formal lecture and response in the evening. "The State of the Debate over k the Book of Mormon" NOVEMBER 12 Daniel Peterson, Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University, is best known in Harry S. Stout the academic world as an expert on Islam. As editor of the FARMS Review of Books for many years, however, he "Joseph Smith and Jonathan Edwards" is well informed on the controversies surrounding the historicity of the Book of Mormon. In his talk, he will Harry S. Stout is Professor of History, Religious report on the debate as it stands right now. Studies, and American Studies at Yale University and Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity, k Yale Divinity School. He is general editor of the Jonathan (continued on page 3) PAGE 2 HTTP://RELIGION.CGU.EDU t HTTP://RSC.CGU.EDU/CMSSA CLAREMONT MORMON STUDIES NEWSLETTER t FALL 2009 (continued from page 2) ApRIL 15 Women’s Oral History Martha Bradley Evans The Howard W. Hunter Program for Mormon “The Fundamentalists Today” Studies announces an ongoing oral history project to begin this fall. Women in three areas, Claremont, Martha Evans, Professor of Architecture at the Pasadena, and Newport Beach will begin interviews University of Utah, also directs the Honors Program. to flesh out the “lived history” of LDS women in She has written on the Utah controversy over the ERA the 20th century primarily in Southern California, and a joint biography of four Mormon women entitled to document and categorize experiences otherwise Four Zinas : A Story of Mothers and Daughters on the unrecorded. Work will begin in those three areas Mormon Frontier. She gained insight into Fundamentalist to locate candidates for interviews, to transcribe, polygamous communities doing research for her book edit, and index the interviews, and to work toward a Kidnapped from that Land: The Government Raids on the conceptualization of Mormon women’s experience. Short Creek Polygamists. The project will be undertaken in connection with the class “Mormon Women in the Twentieth k Century” REL 313 to be offered in the school of MAY 21–22 religion this fall. Nominations for people to be interviewed and offers to become involved in the Association of Mormon Scholars program, from students or from the community, will be welcomed. Write Dr. Claudia Bushman at in the Humanities the School of Religion, 831 N. Dartmouth Avenue, Claremont, California, or at claudia.bushman@ The Family and Human benikana.com. t Relationships in History, Literature, Art, and Philosophy Conference The Association is now soliciting papers for the conference. Every story, it is said, is a family story. Yet in stressing the freedom and self-sufficiency of the Q&A wiTH VISITING SCHOLARS individual, modern culture de-emphasizes the degree k to which people are born in dependency, of specific Under the sponsorship of CMSSA, each lecturer in this parents, and develop in and through relationships with year’s series meets with graduate students for informal others, most closely in the family. By considering the discussions about current issues in the field and useful family, family history, and human relationships, this strategies in pursuing a career in scholarship. CMSSA conference will invite inquiry into changes in the culture members and other graduate students are invited to attend these discussions which are usually held a couple of of the family over time, inquiries into family memory, hours before the evening lecture. For more information on depictions of the family and the individual in art and these student events, visit the student association’s website literature, and philosophical investigations of the role of at http://rsc.cgu.edu/cmssa or sign up with the CMSSA family, friends, and mentors in personal development. mailing list by emailing [email protected]. k The lectures are given on Thursdays at 8 p.m. in the Mudd Auditorium, Claremont School of Theology, and are free and open to the public. t HTTP://RELIGION.CGU.EDU t HTTP://RSC.CGU.EDU/CMSSA PAGE 3 CLAREMONT MORMON STUDIES NEWSLETTER t FALL 2009 On Mormon Studies at Claremont BY Karen Torjesen Former Dean of the School of Religion, Claremont Graduate University ormon Studies at Claremont developing women’s studies at invited to have a voice, to raise their Mis a significant contributor to Claremont. For many years women own questions, the study of religion religious pluralism at Claremont. For students were working on the side to began to change. New content lead years we have outstanding Mormon learn what they could about women’s to new methodologies, new method- students in Philosophy of Religion, issues. Their perspectives required a ologies lead to new epistemologies. Theology, History of Christianity, new way of look- Mormon Studies Biblical Studies, and more recently ing at things, dif- at Claremont will Women’s Studies in Religion. They ferent questions, “Mormon Studies at do something mastered their fields of study, even different Claremont will … similar for the contributed interesting research, epistemologies, study of Chris- and went on to teaching positions but there was no help us rethink the tianity and will across the country, but their pres- space for these categories of what help us rethink ence had little impact on the study in the way the the categories of of religion, nor did their perspective study of religion constitutes a religion.” what constitutes as Mormons generate new questions, was constituted. a religion.