|
Showing 1 - 5 of
5 matches in All Departments
Contingent Citizens features fourteen essays that track changes in
the ways Americans have perceived the Latter-day Saints since the
1830s. From presidential politics, to political violence, to the
definition of marriage, to the meaning of sexual equality-the
editors and contributors place Mormons in larger American histories
of territorial expansion, religious mission, Constitutional
interpretation, and state formation. These essays also show that
the political support of the Latter-day Saints has proven, at
critical junctures, valuable to other political groups. The
willingness of Americans to accept Latter-day Saints as full
participants in the United States political system has ranged over
time and been impelled by political expediency, granting Mormons in
the United States an ambiguous status, contingent on changing
political needs and perceptions. Contributors: Matthew C. Godfrey,
Church History Library; Amy S. Greenberg, Penn State University; J.
B. Haws, Brigham Young University; Adam Jortner, Auburn University;
Matthew Mason, Brigham Young University; Patrick Q. Mason,
Claremont Graduate University; Benjamin E. Park, Sam Houston State
University; Thomas Richards, Jr., Springside Chestnut Hill Academy;
Natalie Rose, Michigan State University; Stephen Eliot Smith,
University of Otago; Rachel St. John, University of California
Davis
Contingent Citizens features fourteen essays that track changes in
the ways Americans have perceived the Latter-day Saints since the
1830s. From presidential politics, to political violence, to the
definition of marriage, to the meaning of sexual equality-the
editors and contributors place Mormons in larger American histories
of territorial expansion, religious mission, Constitutional
interpretation, and state formation. These essays also show that
the political support of the Latter-day Saints has proven, at
critical junctures, valuable to other political groups. The
willingness of Americans to accept Latter-day Saints as full
participants in the United States political system has ranged over
time and been impelled by political expediency, granting Mormons in
the United States an ambiguous status, contingent on changing
political needs and perceptions. Contributors: Matthew C. Godfrey,
Church History Library; Amy S. Greenberg, Penn State University; J.
B. Haws, Brigham Young University; Adam Jortner, Auburn University;
Matthew Mason, Brigham Young University; Patrick Q. Mason,
Claremont Graduate University; Benjamin E. Park, Sam Houston State
University; Thomas Richards, Jr., Springside Chestnut Hill Academy;
Natalie Rose, Michigan State University; Stephen Eliot Smith,
University of Otago; Rachel St. John, University of California
Davis
Mormon Women's History: Beyond Biography demonstrates that the
history and experience of Mormon women is central to the history of
Mormonism and to histories of American religion, politics, and
culture. Yet the study of Mormon women has mostly been confined to
biographies, family histories, and women's periodicals. The
contributors to Mormon Women's History engage the vast breadth of
sources left by Mormon women-journals, diaries, letters, family
histories, and periodicals as well as art, poetry, material
culture, theological treatises, and genealogical records-to read
between the lines, reconstruct connections, recover voices, reveal
meanings, and recast stories. Mormon Women's History presents women
as incredibly inter-connected. Familial ties of kinship are
multiplied and stretched through the practice and memory of
polygamy, social ties of community are overlaid with ancestral
ethnic connections and local congregational assignments, fictive
ties are woven through shared interests and collective memories of
violence and trauma. Conversion to a new faith community unites and
exposes the differences among Native Americans, Yankees, and
Scandinavians. Lived experiences of marriage, motherhood, death,
mourning, and widowhood are played out within contexts of expulsion
and exile, rape and violence, transnational immigration,
establishing "civilization" in a wilderness, and missionizing both
to new neighbors and far away peoples. Gender defines, limits, and
opens opportunities for private expression, public discourse, and
popular culture. Cultural prejudices collide with doctrinal
imperatives against backdrops of changing social norms, emerging
professional identities, and developing ritualization and
sacralization of lived religion. The stories, experiences, and
examples explored in Mormon Women's History are neither
comprehensive nor conclusive, but rather suggestive of the ways
that Mormon women's history can move beyond individual lives to
enhance and inform larger historical narratives.
Mormon Women's History: Beyond Biography demonstrates that the
history and experience of Mormon women is central to the history of
Mormonism and to histories of American religion, politics, and
culture. Yet the study of Mormon women has mostly been confined to
biographies, family histories, and women's periodicals. The
contributors to Mormon Women's History engage the vast breadth of
sources left by Mormon women-journals, diaries, letters, family
histories, and periodicals as well as art, poetry, material
culture, theological treatises, and genealogical records-to read
between the lines, reconstruct connections, recover voices, reveal
meanings, and recast stories. Mormon Women's History presents women
as incredibly inter-connected. Familial ties of kinship are
multiplied and stretched through the practice and memory of
polygamy, social ties of community are overlaid with ancestral
ethnic connections and local congregational assignments, fictive
ties are woven through shared interests and collective memories of
violence and trauma. Conversion to a new faith community unites and
exposes the differences among Native Americans, Yankees, and
Scandinavians. Lived experiences of marriage, motherhood, death,
mourning, and widowhood are played out within contexts of expulsion
and exile, rape and violence, transnational immigration,
establishing "civilization" in a wilderness, and missionizing both
to new neighbors and far away peoples. Gender defines, limits, and
opens opportunities for private expression, public discourse, and
popular culture. Cultural prejudices collide with doctrinal
imperatives against backdrops of changing social norms, emerging
professional identities, and developing ritualization and
sacralization of lived religion. The stories, experiences, and
examples explored in Mormon Women's History are neither
comprehensive nor conclusive, but rather suggestive of the ways
that Mormon women's history can move beyond individual lives to
enhance and inform larger historical narratives.
Revered by the public, respected by scholars, and imitated by
politicians, Abraham Lincoln remains influential more than two
hundred years after his birth. His memory has inspired books,
monuments, and museums and also sparked controversies, rivalries,
and forgeries. That so many people have been interested in Lincoln
for so long makes him an ideal subject for exploring why history
matters to ordinary Americans as well as to academic specialists.
In Everybody's History, Keith A. Erekson focuses on the
Southwestern Indiana Historical Society-an organisation composed of
lawyers, historians, collectors, genealogists, teachers, college
presidents, and newspaper editors-who joined together during the
1920s and 1930s to recover a part of Lincoln's life his biographers
had long ignored: the years from age seven to twenty-one when he
lived on the Indiana frontier. Participants in the "Lincoln
Inquiry," as it was commonly known, researched old records,
interviewed ageing witnesses, hosted pageants, built a historical
village, and presented their findings in public and in print. Along
the way they defended their methods and findings against
competitors in the fields of public history and civic
commemoration, and rescued some of Indiana's own history by
correcting a forgotten chapter of Lincoln's. Everybody's History
traces the development of popular interest in Lincoln to uncover
the story of an extensive network of non professional historians
who contested old authorities and advanced new interpretations. In
so doing, the book invites all who are interested in the past to
see history as both vital to public life and meaningful to
everybody.
|
|