Skip to main content

miranda wilcox

data-content-type="article"

Book Notes: Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy

July 25, 2014 12:00 AM
In my estimation, Standing Apart is the most important Mormon studies book since Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling. In terms of genre, the books could hardly be further apart—Bushman’s is a narrative biography while Wilcox and Young’s is a collection of independently written papers once delivered at an academic conference. But in terms of cultural work, the biography and the collection of papers both use scholarly tools to reconfigure modern Mormon understandings of crucial elements of their religious history. Standing Apart has the potential to do for Mormon narratives of the “Great Apostasy” what Rough Stone Rolling did for Mormon understandings of the prophet Joseph Smith—complicate, nuance, and strengthen. Brigham Young University should be proud of its efforts to encourage and facilitate the production of this book. ((The book carries the typical disclaimer that it represents the views of its writers and not that of BYU or the LDS Church (ix). But the editors benefited from an Eliza R. Snow Faculty Grant from BYU, and the symposium itself, “Mormon Conceptions of the Apostasy,” was held at BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library in March, 2012. Co-editor Miranda Wilcox is associate professor of English at BYU, three other contributors are professors at BYU, and one other is a professor at BYU-Idaho. Wilcox reflects on the creation of this book at By Common Consent.))Without objecting to or affirming all of the many, many specific claims these landmark books make, it’s enough here to recognize what these books themselves signal: the increasing acceptability and even desire to bring careful scholarly work to bear on Mormon history and thought. ((This open attitude to academic studies is also manifest in the impressive Gospel Topics essays periodically being added to LDS.org and in the Church’s own Joseph Smith Papers project (to be reviewed by Mark A. Mastromarino in the forthcoming issue of the Mormon Studies Review).)) This is a complicated way of saying something simple: When Mormons make claims about historical events, it becomes them to be as accurate as possible. The tools of scholarship can be used to assess and help refine LDS claims about history—in this particular case, about the “Great Apostasy”:
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection= overrideCardHideByline= overrideCardHideDescription= overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=
data-content-type="article"

Miranda Wilcox on "the possibilities of reading collaboratively"

July 15, 0014 12:00 AM
The first annual Mormon Theology Seminar recently wrapped things up in London (see here for more, or read the seminar co-director Joe Spencer's reflections here). I asked seminar participants to reflect on their experiences in order to give me a sense of what they got out of the gathering. This post features Miranda Wilcox, an associate professor of English at Brigham Young University where she teaches medieval literature and researches the religious culture of Anglo-Saxon England. She recently co-edited Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy (Oxford University Press, 2014). BHodges Miranda Wilcox
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection= overrideCardHideByline= overrideCardHideDescription= overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=

Subscribe to our Monthly Newsletter

* indicates required