Participants in Richard Bushman’s and Terryl Givens’ Summer Seminar on the Gold Plates will be presenting papers tomorrow, Thursday, August 18th, at BYU. Here are the details:
The Mormon Scholars Foundation Annual Summer Symposium on Mormon Culture
The Cultural History of the Gold Plates
Thursday, August 18, 2011
B037 Joseph F. Smith Building
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
The Cultural History of the Gold Plates
Thursday, August 18, 2011
B037 Joseph F. Smith Building
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
Morning Session
| 9:00 AM | Welcome by Richard Bushman, Invocation TBA |
| 9:15 AM | “Worlds of Discourse, Plates of Gold: Joseph Smith’s Plates as Cultural Catalysts”—Stephen Taysom |
| 9:45 AM | “Guard the Gold: Didactic Fiction and the Mainstreaming of Moroni”—Ben Bascom |
| 10:15 AM | “Fictionalizing Faith: Popular Polemics and the Golden Plates”—Jared Halverson |
| 10:45 AM | BREAK |
| 11:00 AM | “Artistic Depictions of the Gold Plates and the Material Cultural Inheritance”—Julie Fredericks |
| 11:30 AM | “Processing the Plates: The Presence and Absence of the Gold Plates”—Tyler Gardner |
| 12:00 PM | “”Wagonloads’: The Disappearance of the Book of Mormon’s Sealed Portion”—Rachael Givens |
| 12:30 PM | BREAK FOR LUNCH |
Afternoon Session
| 1:45 PM | “Fantasy, Fraud and Freud: The Uncanny Gold Plates in 19th Century Newspaper Accounts”—Sarah Reed |
| 2:15 PM | “The Forbidden Gaze: The Veiling of the Gold Plates and Joseph Smith’s Redefinition of Sacred Space”—Elizabeth Mott |
| 2:45 PM | “The Notion of Ancient Metal Records in Joseph Smith’s Day”—Michael Reed |
| 3:15 PM | BREAK |
| 3:30 PM | “The Metallurgical Plausibility of the Gold Plates”—Caroline Sorensen |
| 4:00 PM | “Rediscovering Joseph Smith’s ‘Discovery Narrative’ in Southern Utah”—Christopher Smith |
| 4:30 PM | “In Consequence of Their Wickedness: The Decline and Fall of Mormon Seership, 1838-1900”—Rachel Gostenhofer |
A PDF version of the program is also available.
Awesome. Can’t wait.
Looks good.
Wow that sounds fascinating! For once I wish I didn’t live so far from Provo :\
Anybody know if the papers from these summer symposia that Richard Bushman leads are available anywhere? A quick google didn’t turn anything up.
Yes, they’re from the Bushman/Givens summer seminar.
Chris, right, but I can’t seem to find a link to the papers from the summer seminars in the past anywhere on the Neal A. Maxwell Institute or BYU Studies websites. Does anybody know if they’re available for purchase or download anywhere?
I know some years there has been discussion of putting together a book, but I’m not sure it’s ever quite happened. I know BYU Studies and Dialogue often scope out the symposium and have invited some of the presenters to submit their papers. I don’t know of any central place to find them.