Romantic fiction comprises 25% of books sold in the US; its readers represent a diverse group. Popularity notwithstanding, the genre is regularly challenged as trashy and prurient and for reinforcing the limitations of raditional gender roles. This panel will examine what the themes, trends, and traits of the genre and its readership help reveal about …
Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2011
Long-Haired Preachers Come Out Every Night: Mormonism’s Role In The Joe Hill Case
The state of Utah executed labor songwriter Joe Hill ninety-five years ago. While there is no evidence that Church leadership played any direct part in the case, interesting questions arise in three areas where the Joe Hill case intersects with Mormon history and Mormon players in the trial. How did the utah Supreme Court favor …
We Are All Going To Have To Live It Someday
Mormon theology distinguishes between eternal principles, called ‘higher laws,’ and earthly compromises or ‘lower laws.’ While the early practice of plural marriage is now forbidden in the mainstream LDS Church, it is still considered by many to be a higher law that ‘we are all going to have to live someday.’ This session will compare …
From The Absolute To The Individual: Person And Pre-Mortal Existence In Nineteenth-Century Mormonism And Romanticism
In When Souls Had Wings: Premortal Existence in Western Thought, Terryl Givens covers the heterodox doctrine of a pre-mortal existence from Plato to today. This idea in Platonic philosophy and its emphasis in Christian Platonism always accompanies a story of a fall from perfect unity in the ideal and a return to the same unity …
Solitary Faith
The paper investigates the cultural space inhabited by LDS women who remain single past the “ordinary” marrying age of their religion. Using stories and personal narratives of single LDS women, the project situates and analyzes the experiences of the women within the broader Mormon framework. The women in the study feel out of sorts: they …
One Of The Five Wise Virgins On A Date With The Prodigal Son
Sparks fly—sensual and spiritual collide, alluding to the forbidden, insinuating a route to the secret and the hidden in all of us, rallying the spirit. Love poetry can walk this line and do it openly and unashamedly, claiming our deepest affections, healing our contradictions, inducing us to laugh and cry at our fears. Come hear …
Millennial Mentality And Religious Relevance
Millennials, the generation born after 1981, are raised to be doubters and seekers. in The Book of Mormon musical, millennial missionary elder Price notes that Mormons Ellen Decoo, Jennifer Duqué, Chris Naegle, Ann-Michelle Neal
Raising The Dead: Mormons, Evangelicals, And Miracles In America
The power to raise the dead was among the gifts Christ gave his twelve apostles, as recorded in Matthew; later Paul boldly asserted it before Herod Agrippa. The gift appears again in the Book of Mormon. It should be no surprise that when Joseph Smith proclaimed the estoration of the primitive church, expectations for the …
Made-Up Missionaries, Fake Faith, & Concocted Conversions: The Alchemy Of The Book Of Mormon Musical
The Book of Mormon musical plays to sold-out audiences who leap to their feet for standing ovations as the show ends; the play has earned critical raves and won “Best Musical” in the 2011 Tonys. Whether “God loves Mormons and he wants some more,” as the lyrics to “Two by Two” declare, Broadway seems to …
The Early Israelite/Christian Doctrine Regarding The Primordial Incarnation Of Yahweh And Satan
Latter-day Saints understand the Bible is not always “translated correctly” and that many plain and precious parts have been removed. The Dead Sea Scrolls reveal that among the missing information is an ancient Israelite/Christian doctrine that yahweh was born on earth as the firstborn son of adam—first as abel and afterwards as Seth—and that Cain …