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Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The Wonder of Scripture Lecture Series

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This year, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship will be hosting a Wonder of Scripture Lecture Series, every Friday at 11 AM. These lectures will be held in 3714 HBLL and uploaded to our YouTube channel for on-demand streaming.

Please join us for these lectures, where scholars from across campus and the world will dive deep into scripture and its meaning.

Fall 2024 Wonder of Scripture Lecture Schedule

September

October

November

  • 1 - Kylie Nielson Turley, BYU Professor of Religion
  • 8 - Joseph M. Spencer, BYU Professor of Ancient Scripture
  • 15 - Ravi M. Gupta, Charles Redd Chair of Religious Studies, Utah State University
  • 19 - Annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture with Jack Welch, Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law Emeritus in the J. Reuben Clark Law School (7 PM in the Hinckley Assembly Hall)

December

  • 6 - Kimberly Matheson, Laura F. Willes Research Fellow at the Maxwell Institute

About the Fall 2024 Speakers

Richard Bushman

September 19, Special Opening Lecture

Richard Bushman is Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. Professor Bushman specializes in the social and cultural history of the United States. He received his B.A., M.A., and PhD from Harvard University. Professor Bushman is best known to Latter-day Saints as the inaugural Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University (2008-2011) and the author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (2005) and, most recently, Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History (Oxford 2023).

Thomas Griffith

September 20, Lecture

Thomas B. Griffith was a judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit from 2004-2020. Currently he is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University. He graduated in 1978 from Brigham Young University, where he majored in humanities with an emphasis in comparative literature, and in 1985 from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was an editor of the law review. Before he was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals, Judge Griffith worked in private practice in North Carolina and Washington D.C. (1985-1994), Senate Legal Counsel of the United States (1995-1999) and assistant to the president and general counsel of BYU (2000-2004)

Justin Collings

September 27, Lecture

Justin Collings is the academic vice president of Brigham Young University. Dr. Collings’s focuses of study are constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, and constitutional history. In 2006, Dr. Collings graduated with a BA from BYU, double-majoring in English and Italian and minoring in classical civilization. He went on to earn a JD and a PhD in history from Yale. After serving as a law clerk for Judge Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, he joined the J. Reuben Clark Law School’s faculty in 2013. He is the author of two books published by Oxford University Press: Democracy’s Guardians: A History of the German Federal Constitutional Court, 1951–2001 (2015) and Scales of Memory: Constitutional Justice and Historical Evil (2021). Dr. Collings is also the author of the forthcoming book Divine Law for the Maxwell Institute series, Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants.

 

Terryl Givens

October 4, Lecture

Terryl L. Givens is a Neal A. Maxwell Senior Research Fellow. He formerly held the Jabez A. Bostwick Chair of English and was Professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Richmond. He is the author of many books about Latter-day Saint history and culture, including Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought, Feeding the Flock: The Foundations of Mormon Practice, and By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion, each with Oxford University Press. He is also co-author, with Fiona Givens, of The God Who Weeps, The Crucible of Doubt, and The Christ Who Heals. He is also the author of the volume on Agency in the Maxwell Institute series, Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants.

Gaye Strathearn

October 11, Lecture

Gaye Strathearn is a professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture and in the Ancient Near East Studies program at BYU, and currently serves as an Associate Dean of Religious Education. She has taught at BYU since 1995, including a year at BYU’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. Dr. Strathearn received her bachelor of physiotherapy from the University of Queensland (Australia, 1982), a BA and MA in Near Eastern studies from BYU (1990 and 1992), and a PhD in religion (New Testament) from the Claremont Graduate University (2004). Professor Strathearn is the editor of six books and the author of dozens of chapters and articles on New Testament topics and the Book of Mormon.

Sharon Harris 

October 18, Lecture

Sharon Harris is Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University. Dr. Harris has degrees in Music Education from BYU, Humanities from the University of Chicago, and English from Fordham University. Her research and teaching focuses on early modern English literature and music and sound studies. In addition to literary studies, Dr. Harris has published on theology, the Book of Mormon, and the history of Latter-day Saint singles wards. She has worked in public education, nonprofit arts administration, and academic publishing. She is the author of Enos, Jarom, Omni: A Brief Theological Introduction (Maxwell Institute, 2020).

Heather Chesnut

October 25, Lecture

Heather is a civil rights attorney at the Utah Attorney General’s Office; she defends Utah state agencies and employees against civil lawsuits. Before that, she was a trial attorney with the Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association; she defended indigent people charged with criminal offenses. She has taken more than forty cases to trial, conducted an extensive defensive motion practice, and counseled hundreds of people facing difficult legal situations. She received Juris Doctor and Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of Utah. Heather is the author of Counsel, Please Rise: A Criminal Attorney’s Spiritual Journey, published this year by the Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book.

Kylie Nielson Turley

November 1, Lecture

 

Kylie Nielson Turley has taught writing, rhetoric, and literature classes since 1997 at Brigham Young University, where she emphasizes a literary approach to the Book of Mormon in her Literature of the LDS People course. She has published articles on Alma, Latter-day Saint "home literature" fiction and poetry, and Utah and Latter-day Saint women's history. She is also the author of numerous personal essays. She is the author of Alma 1-29: A Brief Theological Introduction (Maxwell Institute, 2020).

Joseph Spencer

November 8, Lecture

Joseph M. Spencer is a philosopher and an associate professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He has degrees from Brigham Young University, San Jose State University, and the University of New Mexico, having earned his PhD in philosophy from the University of New Mexico in 2015. He is the author (or co-author) of seven books, most recently A Word in Season: Isaiah’s Reception in the Book of Mormon (University of Illinois Press, 2023). His work focuses on philosophy, theology, and scripture. Professor Spencer serves as the President of the Book of Mormon Studies Association, as the associate director of the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar, and as a coeditor of the book series, Introductions to Mormon Thought (published by the University of Illinois Press).

Ravi Gupta

November 15, Lecture

Ravi M. Gupta holds the Charles Redd Chair of Religious Studies and serves as Professor and Department Head of the Department of History at Utah State University. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Boise State University (1999) and his MSt in the Study of Religion (2000) and DPhil in Hinduism (2004) from the University of Oxford. He is the author or editor of four books, including an abridged translation of the Bhagavata Purana (with Kenneth Valpey), published in 2017 by Columbia University Press. Professor Gupta is a Permanent Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and a past president of the Society for Hindu Christian Studies. His current research focuses on the Bhagavata Purana's Sanskrit commentaries. He enjoys teaching World Religions, Hinduism, Sanskrit, and Religious Studies Theory and Method.

Jack Welch

November 19, Annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture

 

John W. Welch is the Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law emeritus in BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. He is scholar of religion and law credited with discovering the many instances of the ancient literary form of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, a realization he had as a young missionary in Germany. Professor Welch received his bachelor’s degree in history and his master’s degree in Latin and Greek, both from Brigham Young University. He then studied at Oxford and later received his JD from Duke University. In 1979 he founded the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) while working as a lawyer in southern California. He was editor-in-chief of BYU Studies for 27 years, a contributing author for the Joseph Smith Papers project, editor for the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, and the General Editor of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. He is the author and editor of numerous books and is one of the greatest living expositors of the Book of Mormon, known especially for his important books, The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount (Deseret Book, 1990), and The Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon (BYU, 2008).

Kimberly Matheson

December 6, Lecture

Kimberly Matheson is the Laura F. Willes Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Her research centers on Book of Mormon theology, Christian contemplative practice, and the continental philosophy of religion. Kimberly holds a PhD in theology from Loyola University Chicago, an MTS in philosophy of religion from Harvard Divinity School, and a BA in ancient near east studies from Brigham Young University. She is the author of Helaman: A Brief Theological Introduction (Maxwell, 2020) and sits on the boards of the Book of Mormon Studies Association and the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar.