Tag Archives: reviews

Mormon Studies

Emma’s Family (Review)

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Ronald E. Romig, ed., Emma’s Family. Independence, Missouri: John Whitmer Books, 2008. (www.JohnWhitmerBooks.com)

When I was growing up – and heard again from an elderly Latter-day Saint as recently as six weeks ago – the prevailing LDS view of Emma Smith, widow of the Prophet, was that she was, if not quite a bad woman, at least unworthy of praise. She had, according to the popular condemnation, “left the Church, prevented Joseph’s children from growing up in the Church, and helped to start that other church.”

In the past few years books and booklets, fireside presentations, and most recently a movie, have gone to the other extreme, portraying Emma as a sentimental heroine, or a feminist dynamo whose virtues and leadership role in the Church rival that of the Prophet himself.

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Mormon Studies

From Our Exchanges: Howard S. Swan, “The Music of the Mormons, 1830-1865”

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Howard S. Swan, “The Music of the Mormons, 1830-1865,” The Huntington Library Quarterly, v. 12, no. 3 (May 1949), 223-252.

Howard S. Swan (1906-1995), “Dean of American Choral Music,” as one 1995 obituary called him, was the choir director at Occidental College in Los Angeles for nearly 40 years. After his “retirement,” he went on to teach at Fullerton and Irvine. A prize in his name is awarded annually to a retired California music teacher who typifies Swan’s artistry, personality, humanitarian spirit, and continuing dedication to music after the end of a formal career. Tragically, Swan himself could not sing during much of his adult life, suffering from a paralyzed vocal chord.

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Mormon Studies, Utah history

Report: William P. MacKinnon, “Thomas L. Kane and the Utah War”

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David J. Whittaker, curator of Mormon and western materials for L. Tom Perry Special Collections at BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library, has organized an exhibition and lecture series featuring the Thomas L. and Elizabeth W. Kane papers now housed at BYU.

Last Wednesday’s (November 12) lecture by Bill MacKinnon was the first of the series I had been able to attend (see this Juvenile Instructor post for the listing of past and future entries in the series). The lecture was held in the Lee Library auditorium; I estimate that about 150 people were there. The lecture was taped for future broadcast on KBYU. David J. Whittaker introduced Bill like the old friend that the two of them are, and Bill gave his lecture, entitled “Thomas L. Kane and the Utah War: BYU’s Kane Collection as Lodestone.”

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Uncategorized

From our exchanges: “The Awful March of the Saints,” American Heritage, Fall 2008

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David Roberts, “The Awful March of the Saints,” American Heritage 58:3 (Fall 2008), 28-31.

The current issue of American Heritage magazine, not yet available on the internet (please do not post links to copyright-violating scans that interested Latter-day Saints sometimes post), contains a short article by David Roberts about the Martin and Willie handcart companies, a foretaste of his just-published Devil’s Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy (my copy of which I expect to be delivered by Amazon this afternoon). Continue reading From our exchanges: “The Awful March of the Saints,” American Heritage, Fall 2008 →

From Our Exchanges

From our exchanges: “Basketball and the Culture-Change Process”

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Kendall Blanchard. “Basketball and the Culture-Change Process: The Rimrock Navajo Case,” Council on Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 5:4 (Nov. 1974), 8-13.

This is a truly odd little piece. To begin with, “Rimrock” is a pseudonym; I’m guessing that “Rimrock” is Fruitland or Kirtland in the northwest corner of the state, based on statements in the article that “Rimrock” is in close proximity to the Navajo Reservation, with 95% of its 1300 Anglo inhabitants being Mormon.

The author’s stated purpose is “the description of basketball and its role in the changing Rimrock Navajo community.” Blanchard’s “other” against whom he contrasts the Navajo community and which he sees as attempting to change that community is Mormon – not generic Anglo, not generic American, but specifically Mormon. His outsider’s estimate of the importance of basketball to the Mormon community strikes me as comically absurd. Is this really what cultural halls/basketball courts, and “Church Ball,” and the lazy ward’s Young Men’s program, look like to non-Mormons? Continue reading From our exchanges: “Basketball and the Culture-Change Process” →

From Our Exchanges

From our exchanges: Murder Ballads of Mormondom

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Olive Woolley Burt, “Murder Ballads of Mormondom,” Western Folklore 18:2 (April 1959), 141-156.

Olive Woolley Burt (1894-1981) used to be a very well-known name in Mormon, Utah, western, and American letters. She was a reporter or columnist both for the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News, studied at the University of Chicago and at Columbia, published fiction and non-fiction, for children and adults (from 1902, when she was just 8 years old, to 1979, when she was 85, she published something professionally every year except 1904), and contributed to church publications, like the Relief Society Magazine. Her book American Murder Ballads and Their Stories (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958) is the basis for this article.
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From Our Exchanges

From our exchanges: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s “A Pail of Cream”

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Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “A Pail of Cream,” the Journal of American History 89:1 (Jun., 2002), 43-47.

This delightful personal essay covers a lot of ground in five pages: the author’s early attraction to writing, her first professional efforts, Exponent II, the “pink issue” of Dialogue, graduate school and her choice of studies, her support of, by, for, and from other women, A Midwife’s Tale, feminism in and from history, and helping other women “see the many uses of history as well as the many ways of being a woman in times past.”

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From Our Exchanges

From our exchanges: “The Mormon Concept of Mother in Heaven”

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John Heeren, Donald B. Lindsey, Marylee Mason, “The Mormon Concept of Mother in Heaven: A Sociological Account of Its Origins and Development,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 23:4 (Dec. 1984), 396-411.

“Among the various faiths within the Judeo-Christian tradition, belief in a female deity is rather uncommon. One important exception to this image of an exclusively male-occupied pantheon is found in the Mormon belief in a Heavenly Mother.” The three authors discuss the historical manifestation of the Mormon belief in a Mother in Heaven, and also “the contending interests” connected with teaching or distancing the church from the idea.
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From Our Exchanges

From our exchanges: “As the Saints Go Marching By: Modern Jokelore Concerning Mormons”

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Jan Harold Brunvand, “As the Saints Go Marching By: Modern Jokelore Concerning Mormons,” The Journal of American Folklore 83:327 (Jan.-Mar. 1970), 53-60.

Brunvand offers his study of humor by and about contemporary Utah Mormons to demonstrate that folklore can be modern as well as a survival from the 19th century; that folklore is generated by both those within a group and those without; that folklore, while often good natured, sometimes has a negative bite; and that while folklore about the Mormons has often centered on the libidinous, other themes do exist.

Me, I like the article simply for the corny jokes contained therein. Continue reading From our exchanges: “As the Saints Go Marching By: Modern Jokelore Concerning Mormons” →

From Our Exchanges, Uncategorized

From our exchanges: “‘The Goose Hangs High’: Excerpts from the Letters of Martha Hughes Cannon”

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The Utah Historical Quarterly is a rich source of Mormon history that is less well known to the broader LDS community than the more obviously Mormon-themed periodicals like Dialogue, Journal of Mormon History, and BYU Studies. This review of an article from 1980 illustrates the kind of material that can be found in UHQ’s files. Continue reading From our exchanges: “‘The Goose Hangs High’: Excerpts from the Letters of Martha Hughes Cannon” →