Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2020

“Does Mormonism Have an Answer for Climate Change?”: Eco-Grief, Apocalypticism, and Mormon Environmental Rhetorics in the Anthropocene

Given the severity of climate change, its apocalyptic implications, and the growing trend of “eco-grief,” Mormon Studies must engage with this issue more directly and openly. By using the Wayne C. Booth’s theories of rhetoric, I hope to determine how people across the Mormon spectrum communicate about this issue and understand it; whether or not …

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Folksong of the Fringe

Since my teenage years, I’ve been interested in songwriting as a way to document my experiences. Religion was a big part of my life in my early years while growing up in a Mormon family and serving a mission in the early 1980s. Faith, doubt, rebellion, heresy, mysticism, ecumenicism and universalism all have their expression …

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Lunch Broadcast Pushed to the Edge: A Historical Discourse Analysis of the Intersections of Feminism, Transgender Healthcare, and Mormonism

In recent years, gender transitions and the lives of transgender people have been thrust into the consciousness of greater society, yet many remain unaware of the historical interplay of transgender healthcare and radical feminism on historical and contemporary Mormon (LDS) policies and viewpoints. Using her academic training in intersectional feminism, clinical social work, historical discourse …

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Tabernacles of Clay: Gender and Sexuality in Modern Mormonism”: A Book Panel and Response from Author Taylor G. Petrey

This panel brings together a diverse group of scholarly voices to react to Tabernacles of Clay: Gender and Sexuality in Modern Mormonism by Taylor G. Petrey. Drawing on deep archival research, Petrey situates LDS doctrines in gender theory and American religious history since World War II. His challenging conclusion is that Mormonism is conflicted between …

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Gaining from Grief; Living in Gratitude

As human beings we are bonded by one common thread: we all go through seasons. Grief and gratitude are examples of such seasons and how we adjust to and learn from the seasons will determine who we become and whether we will able to acompilsh our God-given purpose in life.

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No Industrial Revolution, No Latter-19th-Century (and later) Mormonism: How a Religion Founded in America Became Largely British

Had not its main body moved to the inter-mountain west, the Church would not have grown and prospered that way it did. In order to achieve an economically self-sustaining societal critical mass in an inhospitable environment, Brigham Young, the industrialist, needed a large number of workers possessing post-agrarian vocational skills and the motivation and financial …

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