The First Annual Summer Seminar on Mormon Theology is scheduled to begin on June 9th at the BYU London Centre in London, England. The theme of the seminar is “A Dream, A Rock, and a Pillar of Fire: Reading 1 Nephi 1.”
Seminar participants will engage in a close reading of the first chapter of the Book of Mormon during daily discussions throughout the first week. The second week will be spent workshopping papers that emerge from these discussions. These papers will be presented during the seminar’s culminating conference, which will be held on June 20th. Recordings of the conference proceedings will be made available on the Mormon Theology Seminar website. Updates and announcements regarding the seminar will also appear here on the Maxwell Institute blog.
The 2014 participants are:
- George Handley (Brigham Young University, Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature)
- Erin Olsen (University of California San Diego, Environmental Sociology)
- Benjamin Peters (University of Tulsa, Communication)
- Julie M. Smith (Independent Scholar, Biblical Studies)
- Michael Ulrich (Université de Franche-Comté, Mathematics)
- Miranda Wilcox (Brigham Young University, English)
Adam Miller, director of the Seminar, is excited about the interdisciplinary spread among the participants, adding, “we were pleased with the number of strong applications we received from both senior scholars and graduate students. While it made the selection process more difficult, it portends well for the future of both the Seminar and of Mormon Studies more generally.”
Miller will direct the Seminar alongside co-director Joseph Spencer with assistance from Brian Hauglid, director of the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies, and James Faulconer, who is the Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding and director of the BYU London Centre. The Seminar is sponsored by the Mormon Theology Seminar in partnership with the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and with support from the Willes Center and the Richard L. Evans Chair.
Spencer said the support received from the Maxwell Institute and the Willes Center has been invaluable. “We simply could not hold a live seminar without their partnership,” Spencer said in a recent press release, “and we’re really looking forward to the productive discussions that will emerge in this setting.”
To learn more about the mission and history of the Mormon Theology Seminar, see here.