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visiting scholar spotlight

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Adam Miller to visit the Institute this summer as affiliate faculty

March 15, 2019 12:00 AM
The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship is excited to announce a new addition to our roster of visiting scholars for 2019. Adam S. Miller will join us as an affiliate faculty member from June until August. Miller is a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas, and author of a number of books including the Institute’s best-selling Living Faith book Letters to a Young Mormon and An Early Resurrection: Life In Christ Before You Die. Through books, articles, guest lectures, and oversight of the Mormon Theology Seminar, Miller has inspired a host of Latter-day Saint students and disciple-scholars.
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Catherine Taylor—“I gave my heart to know wisdom”

September 21, 2018 12:00 AM
The Maxwell Institute is excited to welcome Catherine Gines Taylor as our Hugh W. Nibley Postdoctoral Fellow.
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Christopher Blythe—“to be rigorous and compassionate”

July 30, 2018 12:00 AM
The Maxwell Institute is pleased to welcome Christopher James Blythe as a Research Associate at our Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies. He joins us after three years of documentary editing at the LDS Church History Department’s Joseph Smith Papers. Blythe obtained his PhD from Florida State University in American Religious History in 2015. Christopher Blythe on disciple-scholarshipThe charge to be a disciple-scholar reminds us that there is no contradiction to being a scholar and being a person of faith. The quest for understanding is one that is not in conflict with one’s commitment to the divine. As Elder Maxwell stated, “scholarship is a form of worship.” As a humanities scholar, I see this charge as an invitation both to be rigorous in my analysis and to be compassionate to those I study. It is also a reminder that Latter-day Saint scholars have no reason to seclude ourselves in our own circles, but should actively seek to participate and publish in the larger academic world where our perspectives are needed. While at the Institute, Blythe will be working on a cultural history of Book of Mormon geography. Rather than take sides in this complicated issue, his book will examine why Latter-day Saints have preferred one setting for the Book of Mormon over another at different moments in LDS history. He’s particularly fascinated by the Latter-day Saint interest in New World archaeology—ruins in Mesoamerica, petroglyphs in Utah, and so forth—and plan to document these trends as well.Read some of Blythe’s past contributions to Maxwell Institute publications here.
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Josh Probert—“carving out uniquely Mormon worlds”

June 20, 2018 12:00 AM
The Maxwell Institute is pleased to welcome Josh Probert as a visiting scholar from June 2018 through June 2019. Probert is a historian who specializes in American architecture, decorative arts, and the material culture of religion, having received his PhD in American history from the University of Delaware in cooperation with the Winterthur Museum.Probert currently works as a historic interiors consultant to the LDS Church on various projects related to nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century temples and teaches as an adjunct professor in BYU’s departments of history and art history. Josh Probert
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Cory Crawford—“exhaustive examination and detailed description”

June 18, 2018 12:00 AM
Cory Crawford is currently visiting the Maxwell Institute as recipient of a short-term research grant. He’s working on a book about the Jerusalem temple, dealing especially with something scholars in the field have long neglected—the role of gender in understanding the temple, and the role of the temple in understanding gender. Cory Crawford on Disciple-ScholarshipWhen it comes to scholarship in the context of communities of faith, I’ve been strongly influenced by the example of Richard Bushman, whom I heard say once that the only way to make progress in understanding—whether inside or outside a faith tradition—is to examine a problem as exhaustively as possible, to describe it as accurately as possible, and only then can one begin to pursue its implications. It is this exhaustive examination and detailed description that I am pursuing this summer. I am also guided by the axiom of my friend and colleague Dr. Jill Kirby, who said in Studies in the Bible and Antiquity that “bad scholarship is not faithful scholarship” (SBA 6 : 100). Beyond these guiding ideals, my experience as a Mormon has of course shaped the way I think about sacred space and ritual—and my experience of space and ritual also shaped the way I think about myself—and it engendered in me an interest to understand the role of sacred space in ancient social narratives and collective self-understanding. I’m grateful to the Maxwell Institute for providing me the opportunity to sit with these questions over the summer. Crawford is assistant professor of Biblical Studies in the Department of Classics and World Religions at Ohio University. He previously served as associate editor of the Institute’s Studies in the Bible and Antiquity. He has published in various venues related to Bible and ancient Near East. He is co-editor of a volume under contract with Oxford University Press, provisionally entitled The Bible in Mormonism: A Guide to Scripture in the Latter-day Saint Tradition.Learn more about Crawford here.
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Fiona Givens—“the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful”

June 15, 2018 12:00 AM
We are pleased to welcome Fiona Givens as recipient of a short-term research grant this summer at the Maxwell Institute. She’s currently working on a chapter, titled “Heavenly Mother and Feminism,” for the theology section of the Handbook on Mormonism and Gender (Routledge, forthcoming), edited by Amy Hoyt and Taylor Petrey. Fiona Givens on Disciple-Scholarship“Joseph Smith once said that in order to come out ‘pure Mormons’ we needed to embrace truth found in all religious traditions. Indeed, for Latter-day Saints, the admonition to search for truth embraces all forms of intellectual and academic inquiry—historical, literary, linguistic, social, and cultural to name just a few. Herein lies my disciple-scholarship. My personal, spiritual, and intellectual life has been deepened immeasurably in the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful in the company of myriad disciple-scholars.” In addition to her book chapter, Givens plans to continue expanding her article, “The Perfect Union of Man and Woman: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making,” into a book manuscript.Givens earned degrees in French, German, and in European History while co-raising six children. She is a frequent speaker on podcasts and at conferences and currently works as an independent scholar, having published with Greg Kofford Books, Exponent II, LDS Living, Journal of Mormon History, Dialogue and other venues.Learn more about her background and publications here.
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Terryl Givens—“an abundant life must engage the heart and mind together”

June 14, 2018 12:00 AM
We’re excited to announce that Terryl L. Givens has returned to the Institute as a Neal A. Maxwell Fellow to oversee the Summer Seminar on Mormon Culture, co-sponsored by the Mormon Scholars Foundation. Givens said he greatly values the opportunity to help the Institute gather and nurture disciple-scholars:“I believe that academic scholarship and the gospel alike demand rigorous thought, intellectual integrity, the framing of tough questions and a genuine quest for understanding. One vocabulary and one rhetorical approach may not fit both worlds, but I have experienced no collision of the two worlds in my own professional and devotional life. On the contrary, my faith commitments have shaped the questions I ask, and inspired my efforts with the hope that whatever insights and perspectives we acquire through our investigations may find a place in an eternal web of understanding. Joseph’s revelations couldn’t be clearer on this point: an abundant life must engage the heart and mind together. At its most fundamental level, that strikes me as the informing spirit of the Maxwell Institute.”Givens holds the Jabez A. Bostwick Chair of English and is Professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Richmond.In addition to overseeing the Summer Seminar with Steven Peck, Givens will be working to complete a manuscript, assisted by Brian Hauglid, on the Pearl of Great Price for Oxford University Press. He also hopes to draft a few chapters for his biography of Eugene England. Eric Eliason of Brigham Young University is helping Givens put together an edited collection on Mormon theology as well. Finally, Givens says he’s whittling away at a project called “What Everyone Needs to Know about Mormonism” for a relatively new series produced by Oxford University Press.
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Benjamin Park on empathy in scholarship and discipleship

May 22, 2018 12:00 AM
Benjamin Park is at the Maxwell Institute this summer, working on his tentatively titled book, Democracy's Discontents: A Story of Politics, Polygamy, and Power in Mormon Nauvoo. He's one of the Institute's 2018 short-term research grant recipients, but you might recognize his name because he's been an associate editor of our Mormon Studies Review since volume 1.Park's book about Mormons in Nauvoo grows out of his deep interest in early American politics. He argues that the clashes between the Mormons and their neighbors during the 1840s can be seen as a moment of democratic crisis in the early republic.“Americans were struggling to understand what democracy meant,” Park said. “Joseph Smith and his followers worried that the nation's democratic culture allowed mobocratic rule that trampled on minority rights; their opponents countered by arguing that the saints were trespassing on the boundaries of political and social decorum, proving to be a nuisance to America's democratic experiment.”In the end, Park said, both sides lost faith in the democratic process and turned to extralegal actions, including violence. His book uses this story as a lens through which to understand the tensions of populist governance and cultural boundaries more broadly.Park said the historian's task of taking different perspectives of historical actors—the ability to sympathize with competing points of view—reflects a crucial element of discipleship.“As a historian,” Park said, “I am tasked with trying to reconstruct the motivations and justifications of historical actors, including people with such disparate agendas like Nauvoo's Mormons and Carthage's anti-Mormons. As a disciple, I am tasked to try to empathize with both sides of the divide and see them as individuals who were likely trying to make the best decisions for them and their community. Such a daunting mission should be humbling, but also rewarding.”This isn't Park's first BYU experience. He earned his bachelor's degree in English and history here. He completed his master's of science in theology at the University of Edinburgh and rounded out his student career at the University of Cambridge (MPhil, political thought; PhD, history). He became the inaugural postdoctoral fellow with the University of Missouri's Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, and recently published his first book, American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833 (Cambridge University Press). Now he's an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University, teaching courses in early American history as well as American religions.Park will be at the Maxwell Institute until the end of June.
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Lincoln Blumell—“Scholarship can be a form of devotion”

May 16, 2018 12:00 AM
Lincoln Blumell
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David Peck—“Teaching about virtues in other faiths and cultures”

July 13, 2017 12:00 AM
The Maxwell Institute is delighted to welcome Dr. David D. Peck from Brigham Young University–Idaho as one of our 2017 visiting scholars. 2017 Visiting Fellow David D. Peck
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Deidre Green—“Lifting up women’s experience” (Visiting Scholar Spotlight)

February 14, 2017 12:00 AM
Deidre GreenDeidre Green would like to see more women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints thinking about theology. Not only thinking about it, but also contributing to it. As a scholar of Danish Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, Green understands the value of individual perspectives in a community's efforts to understand God: 'Women’s experience is not ancillary to, but rather foundational for, the articulation of theology...Lifting up women’s experience seems fitting of an LDS framework, in which revelation and doctrine often derive from questions that arise from embodied encounters with the world.' ((Deidre Nicole Green, 'Becoming Equal Partners: Latter-day Saint Women as Theologians,' Mormonism in the Academy: Teaching, Scholarship, & Faith, June 8, 2016. Watch her presentation here. This paper is scheduled for publication in the forthcoming book based on this colloquium.)) For Green, understanding God's purposes requires the mutual participation of women and men, everyone involved offering and learning from diverse perspectives. The Maxwell Institute is grateful that Green brings her perspective as one of this year's visiting fellows. Having completed a PhD in Religion from Claremont Graduate University, she also currently teaches part-time in BYU's Religious Education department.Green is encouraged by historical examples of women contributing to LDS theology, as well as by current efforts by the LDS Church to increase the participation of women: 'As women increasingly feel confident in their knowledge of LDS doctrine, appropriate it, and assume the authority both to teach and shape it, they can better fulfill the imperative given to them by Russell M. Nelson, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, to 'speak with the power and authority of God!'' ((Russell M. Nelson, “A Plea to My Sisters,” General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, October 2015.)) We're thrilled to have Green with us at the Institute. You can read more about her historically grounded and philosophically informed ideas about women and LDS theology in a forthcoming book based on last year's Bushman colloquium. Her contribution is called 'Becoming Equal Partners: Latter-day Saint Women as Theologians.' Stay tuned for more information.
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