For a century and a half, Mormonism has been something of a paradox in the history of the American West: passionately argued about by the church’s adherents and detractors, but largely ignored by professional scholars unsure of what to make of the religion Joseph Smith founded in 1830 or the communities created by what Mormon scripture itself described as a “peculiar people.”
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Books relating to Mormon history are appearing in the catalogs of top academic presses, while secular universities are adding courses, graduate fellowships and endowed chairs.
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“Mormons have been seen as outliers, as oddities, as strange, as people who don’t seem to fit the American narrative,” said Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a professor of history at Harvard University who is working on a book about Mormon women. “But they end up illuminating some of the most important themes in our national history.”
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The latest scholarship builds on the so-called New Mormon history pioneered in the 1960s and ’70s, which aimed to advance a field long dominated by apologists and debunkers by focusing dispassionately on the facts.
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Other scholars are exploring the religious dimensions of plural marriage. In a widely noted 2009 lecture, Kathleen Flake, an associate professor of religious history at Vanderbilt University, argued that 19th-century Mormon plural marriage — while certainly not a happy experience for all women — was part of a broader ritual system that conveyed a reciprocal “priestly authority” on both men and women.
Mormon Studies Attracts More Scholars and Attention - NYTimes.com
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