REL 479: MORMONISM IN TRANSITION, 1880-1930 Fall 2015: Thursdays, 9:00 – 11:50 am McManus 31 Professor J. Spencer Fluhman Office: SAH 21 Office Hour: 1-2 TTh Email: [email protected] The Course: This course uses Mormonism to ask questions about American identity and religion. Through close examination of the Latter-day Saints' (LDS) “transition” period, we assess what it meant to be Mormon and American in an era of expanding national power. How did a minority faith intersect with dominant notions of American citizenship, identity, and empire? What forms of accommodation and resistance characterized Mormonism's move toward the centers of power? Scholars agree that the this period of LDS integration is significant for understanding the faith's still-conflicted place in the nation, yet it remains curiously understudied. The course mixes analysis of select primary sources with contemporary scholarship and considers topics ranging from partisan politics, theology, gender, and family to economics. A general introduction to Mormonism will frame the course and no previous experience with the tradition or its academic study is expected or required. Required Texts: Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930, 3 ed. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2012, paperback) Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion, updated ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, paperback) Matthew B. Bowman, The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith (New York: Random House, 2012, paperback) Richard L. Bushman, Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, paperback) Terryl L. Givens, Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004, paperback) Matthew Kester, Remembering Iosepa: History, Place, and Religion in the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) Reid L. Neilson, Exhibiting Mormonism: The Latter-day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) Jeffrey Nichols, Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power: Salt Lake City, 1847-1918 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002; paperback 2008) W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015) B. H. Roberts, The Autobiography of B. H. Roberts, ed. Gary Bergera (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990) Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987, paperback) Christine Talbot, A Foreign Kingdom: Mormons and Polygamy in American Political Culture, 1852-1890 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013) Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother: An Autobiography (Salt Lake City: Tanner Trust Fund, University of Utah Library, 2006, paperback) Ethan R. Yorgason, Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003; paperback, 2010) Assessment: Final grades are based on several brief review essays, a draft and final version of an extended critical essay, and attendance and participation in the seminar. Students should keep track of test dates and assignment deadlines—you may or may not be reminded. The essay draft and final version are worth 100 points each; the 12 brief review essays are worth 10 points each; attendance and participation is worth 25 points. A final grade will be determined by calculating a percentage of the earned points and possible points on the following scale: 94 – 100% A 80 – 83% B- 67 – 69% D+ 90 – 93% A- 77 – 79% C+ 64 – 66% D 87 – 89% B+ 74 – 76% C 60 – 63% D- 84 – 86% B 70 – 73% C- 0 – 59% E Written Work: A brief written review of each week’s readings help students engage the material critically. Reviews should be at least 600 words in length, use the academic book review as a model, and be submitted via Canvas. Avoid merely summarizing material. Rather, assess the readings in terms of arguments, evidence, methodology, and their place in respective scholarly literature. When a week’s readings comes from two or more sources, the most effective essays will place the readings “in conversation” with one another. Each review is due one hour before the beginning of class. Papers received later in the day are assessed a seven-point penalty. (Consider this the “I had a crazy week and this class doesn’t matter as much to me as my other classes” penalty.) Work turned in thereafter receives no credit. The extended essay allows students to more deeply engage a course topic. Students will choose a topic early in the seminar and write a draft and final essay that critically examines its scholarly literature. The essay not only reviews existing work on the topic, it critiques it and suggests ways forward. The draft should be at least 10 pages but should represent polished preliminary work. The final version should be at least 15 pages. Extended essay drafts should be turned in via hard copy, in class. Final versions are submitted electronically. Late work on the extended essay (except in cases of genuine emergencies, as determined by me) is assessed a substantial penalty (to be determined on a case-by-case basis). Note on Seminar Participation: I reserve the right to adjust borderline grades up or down according to attendance and participation in seminar discussion. Texters occupy a special place of contempt in my heart, worlds without end. Simply tell your people that The Man has repressed your texting rights for three hours each week. Electronic devices should be used for course work only, in other words. Other activities—watching videos of bears falling out of trees, adjusting fantasy football rosters, reading up on celebrity gossip—are egregious violations of class policy and will be answered with a cup of steaming wrath, filled to the brim and overflowing. Lecture and Reading Schedule (Note: when “individual options” book titles are listed without page numbers, read the introduction and a chapter that looks interesting.) Week 1 (September 3): Introducing Course and Craft Week 2 (September 10): The LDS Tradition/Church/People/Culture at Wide Angle Common Reading: Matthew B. Bowman, The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith (New York: Random House, 2012, paperback) Richard L. Bushman, Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) Writing: brief review essay due one hour before class, 600 words, via Canvas Week 3 (September 17): Defining the 19th-Century “Mormon Problem” Common Reading: Christine Talbot, A Foreign Kingdom: Mormons and Polygamy in American Political Culture, 1852-1890 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013) Individual Options: J. Spencer Fluhman, “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012) Terryl L. Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, 2 ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001) Matthew J. Grow, “Contesting the LDS Image: The North American Review and the Mormons, 1881–1907,” Journal of Mormon History 32, no. 2 (2006): 111-138 Megan Sanborn Jones, Performing American Identity in Anti-Mormon Melodrama (New York: Routledge, 2009) Patrick Q. Mason, The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) Leigh E. Schmidt, “Mormons, Freethinkers, and the Limits of Toleration,” Journal of Mormon History 40, no. 2 (2014): 59-91 Writing: brief review essay due one hour before class, 600 words, via Canvas Week 4 (September 24): Conceptualizing Pivots Common Reading: Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987, paperback) Individual Options: B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992) Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986) Armand Mauss, The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle With Assimilation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994) Thomas W. Simpson, "The Death of Mormon Separatism in American Universities, 1877-1896," Religion and American Culture 22, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 163-201. Writing: brief review essay due one hour before class, 600 words, via Canvas Week 5 (October 1): Narrating The Pivot Common Reading: Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930, 3 ed. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2012, paperback) Ethan R. Yorgason, Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003; paperback, 2010) Writing: brief review essay due one hour before class, 600 words, via Canvas Week 6 (October 8): Reorientation Outward … Common Reading: Reid L. Neilson, Exhibiting Mormonism: The Latter-day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) Individual Options: Jessie L. Embry and John H. Brambaugh, “Preaching through Playing: Using Sports and Recreation in Missionary Work, 1911–64,” Journal of Mormon History 35, no. 4 (Fall 2009): 53-84 Bradley