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College and university faculty are invited to apply for a six-week National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar entitled “Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormonism: Bicentennial Perspectives.” The seminar will be led by Professors Richard Bushman (Columbia) and Grant Underwood (BYU) from 20 June to 29 July 2005 on the beautiful BYU campus situated at the base of Utah’s Wasatch mountains.
The bicentennial in 2005 of the birth of Joseph Smith comes on the heels of three decades of burgeoning scholarship on Smith and the religion he founded. Mormon Studies have proliferated to the point that historian Nathan Hatch has observed that Aearly Mormonism may soon rival the Puritans as the most studied of American religious phenomena. This NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers provides a timely occasion for participants to assess this scholarship and expand their understanding of Mormon origins. Through readings, discussion, and research, seminar participants will take a broadly comparative journey, viewing Smith through lenses of American religious and cultural history as well as through models and methodologies of religious studies.
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