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Publications

The publications and achievements listed here represent the work which faculty members and graduate students at the University of Utah have produced.

 

This Abominable SlaveryThis Abominable Slavery:
Race, Religion, and the Battle Over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah

By Professor W. Paul Reeve, Christopher B. Rich Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth

This Abominable Slavery places the debates over African and Indigenous enslavement in Utah Territory within the context of the nation's growing sectional divide and contextualizes the meaning of the laws that Utah legislators passed in the lives of Black enslaved people and Native American indentured servants. In doing so, it sheds new light on race, religion, slavery, and unfree labor in the antebellum period.
 

Race and the PriesthoodLet's Talk About Race and the Priesthood

By Professor W. Paul Reeve

W. Paul Reeve explores three phases of racial priesthood and temple restrictions in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: first, when there were no racial barriers to receiving the priesthood and temple ordinances; second, the 130-year period when there were racial restrictions; and third, a return to “the original universalism.”

 

Sister SaintsSister Saints:
Mormon Women since the End of Polygamy

By Professor Colleen McDannell

During its annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Organization of American Historians (OAH) announced that Colleen McDannell, University of Utah, received their prestigious 2019 Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women's and/or Gender History, which is given annually for the most original book in U.S. women’s and/or gender history.

Religion of a Different Color:
Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness

By Professor W. Paul Reeve

In this book, W. Paul Reeve explores the ways in which nineteenth century Protestant white America made outsiders out of an inside religious group. Much of what has been written on Mormon otherness centers upon economic, cultural, doctrinal, marital, and political differences that set Mormons apart from mainstream America. Reeve instead looks at how Protestants racialized Mormons, using physical differences in order to define Mormons as non-White to help justify their expulsion from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois.
 

 

 

  • Colleen McDannell, “Temple Art Renewal, 2000-2022,” in Amanda Beardsley and Mason Kamana Allred, eds., Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader (Oxford, 2024), 46-76.

  •  

    W. Paul Reeve, “Race and Latter-day Saint Art,” in Amanda Beardsley and Mason Kamana Allred, eds., Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader (Oxford, 2024),433-460.

  • Colleen McDannell, “Mormon Gender in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” in Amy Hoyt and Taylor G. Petrey, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender (New York: Routledge, 2020), 143-156. 
  • Joseph R. Stuart and Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, “Race and Gender in Mormonism, 1830-1978,” in Amy Hoyt and Taylor G. Petrey, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender (New York: Routledge, 2020), 26-37. 
  • Margaret Toscano, “Men and the Priesthood,” in Amy Hoyt and Taylor G. Petrey, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender (New York: Routledge, 2020), 580-597. 
  • Colleen McDannell, “Heritage Religion and the Mormons,” in Ivan Gaskell and Sarah Anne Carter, eds., The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture(New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 337-354. 
  • W. Paul Reeve, “The Council of Fifty and the Search for Religious Liberty,” in The Council of Fifty: What the Records Reveal about Mormon History, ed. by Matthew J. Grow and R. Eric Smith (Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, 2017), 181-190. 
  • Colleen McDannell, “Mormons and Materialism: Struggling against the Ideology of Separation,” in Hugh McLeod and David Hempton, eds. Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 121-140. 
  • W. Paul Reeve, All “Mormon Elder-Berry’s” Children: Race, Whiteness, and the Attack on Mormon “Anglo-Saxon Triumphalism” in Directions for Mormon Studies in the 21st Century, ed. by Patrick Mason (University of Utah Press, 2016), 152-175.
  • W. Paul Reeve, “The Mormon Church in Utah,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism, ed. by Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 38-54. 
  • Margaret Toscano, “Retrieving the Keys: Historical Milestones in LDS Women’s Quest for Priesthood Ordination,” in Voices for Equality: Ordain Women and Resurgent Mormon Feminism, ed. Gary Shepherd, Gordon Shepherd, and Lavina Fielding Anderson (Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2015), 137-166. 
  • Margaret Toscano, “Movement from the Margins: Contemporary Mormon Women’s Visions of the Mother God,” in Spirit, Faith and Church: Women’s Experiences in the English Speaking World, 17th -21st Century, ed. Laurence Lux-Sterritt and Claire Sorin (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 207-226. 
  • “Mormon Morality and Immortality in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series,” in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the Vampire Franchise, ed. Melissa Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 21-36. 

 

  • Jeff Turner, “Polygamy and Religion in Federal Immigration Law: Mormon, Muslim, and Sikh Experiences at the Border,” PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2024.

    • Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Alabama

  • Lori Motzkus Wilkinson, “Scribbling Women in Zion: Latter-day Saint Women’s Vision of Restoration,” PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2020. 
  • Sam Newton, “Blood and Thunder: Joseph Smith and Mormon Resistance in Antebellum America, 1827 - 1844,” PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2020. 
    • Assistant Professor of Law, College of Law, University of Idaho. 
  • Justin R. Bray, “Hoary Heads in Zion: Old Age, Elderhood, and the Latter-day Saints,” History PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2020. 
  • Robin Scott Jensen, “Archives of the Better World: The Nineteenth-Century Historian’s Office and Mormonism’s Archival Flexibility,” PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2019. 
    • Associate Managing Historian, Joseph Smith Papers, Church History Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 
  • Nathan Jones, “In the Nation of Promise: Mormon Political Thought in the Twentieth Century,” PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2019. 
    • Research Assistant, Joseph Smith Papers, Church History Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 
  • Bruce Worthen, “Out of the West: John M. Bernhisel, Washington, and the Mormon Frontier,” PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2018. 
  • Jeremy Chatelain, “The Imprint of the Press: A Cultural History of the Influence of Nineteenth-Century American Print on Mormonism in Kirtland, Ohio, 1831-1837,” Communication PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2018. 
  • Heather Stone, “Young Women in Mormon Homelands, 1975-2000: An Oral History Project,” Communication PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2018. 
  • John Ben Haws, “The Mormon Image in the American Mind: Shaping Public Perception of Latter-day Saints, 1968-2008,” History PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2010. 
    • Associate Professor, Church History and Doctrine, Brigham Young University 

 

Paul Reeve, editorial board, Journal of Mormon History, 2023-Present
Paul Reeve, editorial board, Mormon Studies Review, 2018-2021
Paul Reeve, President, Mormon History Association,2018-2019
Colleen McDannell, editorial board, Journal of Mormon History 
Lori Motzkus Wilkinson, editorial board, Journal of Mormon History 
Colleen McDannell, American Academy of Religion, Mormon Studies Steering Committee, 2010-2018; co-Chair, 2014 
Joseph R. Stuart, Mormon History Association Conference co-chair, 2020, 2021

 

2024

  • Paul Reeve, Book of the Year, BYU History Department, Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood, 2023-2024
2022
  • W. Paul Reeve, “‘I Dug the Graves’: Isaac Lewis Manning, Joseph Smith, and Racial Connections in Two Latter Day Saint Traditions,” Journal of Mormon History 47, no. 1 (2021): 29-67.
  • Greg Kofford Best Historical Article, John Whitmer Historical Association, 2022
  • W. Paul Reeve, “‘I Dug the Graves’: Isaac Lewis Manning, Joseph Smith, and Racial Connections in two Latter Day Saint Traditions,” Journal of Mormon History 47, no. 1 (2021): 29-67.
  • Best Journal of Mormon History article, Mormon History Association, 2022
  • W. Paul Reeve, Century of Black Mormons
    • Ardis E. Parshall Best Public History Award, Mormon History Association, June 2022

 

2021
  • W. Paul Reeve, Century of Black Mormons
    • Elijah Able Service Award, Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage, May 2021

2020 

  • Lori Motzkus Wilkinson, “Restoration of Womankind.” 
    • Best Unpublished Graduate Paper Award, Mormon History Association 

2019      

2018 

  • Matthew Lund, “Missionary Widows: The Economic and Social Impact of Mormon Missions on Families.” 
    • Best Unpublished Graduate Paper Award, Mormon History Association 

2017 

  • Lori Motzkus Wilkinson, “Scribbling Women in Zion: Mormon Women’s Fascination with Fanny Fern.” 
    • Helen Z. Papanikolas Award, Utah State Historical Society 

2016

  • Joseph R. Stuart, “Our Religion is Not Hostile to Real Science’: Evolution, Eugenics, and Race/Religion-Making in Mormonism’s First Century.” 
    • Best Unpublished Graduate Paper Award, Mormon History Association 
  • Joseph R. Stuart, “Those Days Will Live in Memory…Because they were Full of Pain’: A Nineteenth-Century Case Study for Religious Disappointment.” 
    • Helen Z. Papanikolas Award, Utah State Historical Society 

2015

  • Charlotte Hansen Terry, “Rhetoric vs. Reality: Mormon Women’s Diaries and Domesticity in the Early Twentieth Century.” 
    • Best Unpublished Graduate Paper Award, Mormon History Association 

2014

  • Justin R. Bray, “No Hard Feelings’: The Lord’s Supper and Community Worship in Early Mormon Utah.” 
    • Unpublished Graduate Paper Award of Merit, Mormon History Associatio

 

Last Updated: 10/14/24