Jump to content
Seriously No Politics ×

The Cultural History Of The Gold Plates (Bushman/Givens Seminar)

Mike Reed

By Mike Reed
in General Discussions

Recommended Posts

Mike Reed Experienced

Mike Reed

Posted
Posted (edited)

The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

and the Mormon Scholars Foundation

Invite you to the Annual Summer Symposium on Mormon Culture

THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE GOLD PLATES

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Room B037 Joseph F. Smith Building

9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The program will feature the following papers:

Morning Session:

Stephen Taysom, “Worlds of Discourse, Plates of Gold: Joseph Smith’s Plates as Cultural Catalysts”

Ben Bascom, “Guard the Gold: Didactic Fiction and the Mainstreaming of Moroni”

Jared Halverson, “Fictionalizing Faith: Popular Polemics and the Golden Plates”

Julie Fredericks, “Artistic Depictions of the Gold Plates and the Material Cultural Inheritance"

Tyler Gardner, “Possessing the Plates: The Presence and Absence of the Gold Plates”

Rachael Givens, “’Wagonloads’: The Disappearance of the Book of Mormon's Sealed Portion”

Afternoon Session:

Sarah Reed, “Fantasy, Fraud and Freud: The Uncanny Gold Plates in 19th Century Newspaper Accounts”

Elizabeth Mott, “The Forbidden Gaze: The Veiling of the Gold Plates and Joseph Smith’s Redefintion of Sacred Space”

Michael Reed, “The Notion of Ancient Metal Records in Joseph Smith’s Day”

Caroline Sorensen, “The Metallurgical Plausibility of the Gold Plates”

Christopher Smith, “Rediscovering Joseph Smith’s ‘Discovery Narrative’ in Southern Utah”

Rachel Gostenhofer, "In Consequence of Their Wickedness: The Decline and Fall of Mormon Seership, 1838-1900"

Edited by Mike Reed
3
Mike Reed Experienced

Mike Reed

Posted
  • Author
Posted

If you attend this conference, you will be able to know conclusively, once and for all, that Chris Smith and I are different people. Now that would be worth the price of admission, wouldn't it?

kolipoki09 Community Regular

kolipoki09

Posted
Posted

If you attend this conference, you will be able to know conclusively, once and for all, that Chris Smith and I are different people. Now that would be worth the price of admission, wouldn't it?

It would be!

But then again, in the land of make believe I like to pretend that Chris Smith is really Dr. Stuess, Mortal Man is really BCSpace, and that you're really Don Bradley. :rofl:

volgadon Grand Master

volgadon

Posted
Posted

If you attend this conference, you will be able to know conclusively, once and for all, that Chris Smith and I are different people. Now that would be worth the price of admission, wouldn't it?

I am not convinced. How do we know that it isn't someone pretending to be Chris Smith, or that you haven't mastered the dark art of ventriloquy??

1
Chris Smith Proficient

Chris Smith

Posted
Posted
I am not convinced. How do we know that it isn't someone pretending to be Chris Smith, or that you haven't mastered the dark art of ventriloquy??

You'll know me from my avatar.

Chris Smith Proficient

Chris Smith

Posted
Posted
Mike or Chris,

Any thoughts on your experience in this seminar?

It's been wonderful, Dan. I stumbled into a really awesome research topic in the BYU archives, so I'm very pleased with how my paper is turning out. I've also really enjoyed getting to know the other participants.

One interesting aspect of this year's seminar has been the sizable number of non-believers: two Gentiles, an ex-Mormon, and a couple NOMs. I think the believers were a bit bewildered by this at first. The first week, one participant asked Mike and I, "Why are you even here? In order to take the Book of Mormon seriously, you have to approach it as an ancient text. So I don't understand why non-believers would even be here." We've come a long way since that moment. I think everyone in the group, believers and non-believers alike, has done a very admirable job of trying to be inclusive and trying to find a common language to talk about the subject matter. We've also had some really great extracurricular discussions about God, faith, and the afterlife. I think we're all going to walk away from the seminar with a much-deepened respect for those with different views from ourselves.

Chris Smith Proficient

Chris Smith

Posted
Posted (edited)

Here are the papers you won't want to miss:

Tyler Gardner will be talking about how Joseph Smith's possession of the plates changes after the 116 pages incident. Before that incident, Joseph clearly possesses some kind of artifact under a sheet, which he goes to great lengths to protect, and plans eventually to make available to the public. After that incident, though, Joseph doesn't seem to actually have the artifacts anymore. They've been taken back by Moroni, and there's no longer any sense that they will eventually be publicly exhibited. Gardner plans to look at what this means and how it functions within the narrative framework of the Joseph Smith story. His conclusion is that the absence of the plates is ultimately about the protection of a sacred artifact rather than leaving room for faith, as some LDS commentators today would claim.

Rachael Givens will be talking about how the image of the sealed portion has functioned in LDS discourse, and how this has changed over time. She finds that in the Orson Pratt days, the sealed portion served as a symbol of the openness of the LDS canon. But this has changed since Bruce R. McConkie, who insisted that the sealed portion would not be opened until the millennium, and even then would only be a repeat of the scriptures we already possess. This seems to signal that the LDS canon for McConkieites is functionally closed.

In the afternoon session, Liz Mott will be situating the "veiling" of the plates (i.e. the sheet that prevented Joseph's associates from seeing them) in the context of religious esotericism and myths about the "forbidden gaze". She'll also be arguing that the witnesses' statements about seeing the plates with their "spiritual eyes" stem from the same esoteric discourse.

Michael Reed will be showing that the concept of ancient writing on metal plates was uncontroversial and uncontested among Joseph Smith's contemporaries. Smith's story of gold plates was contested because of the fantastic dimensions of the story rather than because of any objection to the notion of ancient metal records.

My paper will be about early "Book of Mormon archaeologists" who found and translated ancient Nephite and Jaredite records in Southern Utah back in the 1960s and '70s, using a combination of scientific and devotional methods. I'll look at how these people were received by Church leaders and academics, and how they eventually became a foil against which the mainstream discipline of Book of Mormon archaeology defined itself. I think at the very least, people will find my paper entertaining. I've got a whole lot of really fun quotes and anecdotes about these guys. I'll also be showing photographs of the signature of Moroni, in case you've ever wondered what that looks like.

Rachel Gostenhofer's paper will look at seer stone divination among Utah Mormons. One of the more interesting dimensions of her paper is what she's found with regard to gender. Seer stone divination is a sphere where women are permitted to continue to exercise religious authority well into the Utah period. But that's just a small sliver of what she's found; this is going to be a really, really good paper.

Edited by Chris Smith
1
Joseph Antley Mentor

Joseph Antley

Posted
Posted
Rachel Gostenhofer's paper will look at seer stone divination among Utah Mormons. One of the more interesting dimensions of her paper is what she's found with regard to gender. Seer stone divination is a sphere where women are permitted to continue to exercise religious authority well into the Utah period. But that's just a small sliver of what she's found; this is going to be a really, really good paper.

I'm especially looking forward to Rachel's (and Mike's and Chris's!). Should be a fun day.

cinepro Grand Master

cinepro

Posted
Posted

Wow. Those are some dang interesting presentations. Are they to be available in any other format, or is this a one-shot deal?

Chris Smith Proficient

Chris Smith

Posted
Posted
Wow. Those are some dang interesting presentations. Are they to be available in any other format, or is this a one-shot deal?

It's rumored that they'll be put online afterward.

Daniel Peterson Grand Master

Daniel Peterson

Posted
Posted

I'm really, really sorry that I couldn't attend.

I planned to, and then people began summoning me to important meetings.

So I planned to attend the morning session.

But then other things came up, and I ended up simply bagging the symposium altogether.

I look forward to reading the papers when they're published.

Xander Experienced

Xander

Posted
Posted

Yeah, spill the beans.

I tried to spill the beans in another thread but it was locked down as a result.

I guess you are not allowed to comment on something unless you were there.

Daniel Peterson Grand Master

Daniel Peterson

Posted
Posted

I've read some accounts elsewhere of Mike Reed's unambiguous triumph over John Gee and the forces of darkness. It must have been very stirring, and I wish that I had been there.

(A few churlish knaves in yet another place to which I have access have offered a somewhat different narrative, but, of course, they're biased -- and probably lying, anyway.)

Mortal Man Community Regular

Mortal Man

Posted
Posted (edited)

I've read some accounts elsewhere of Mike Reed's unambiguous triumph over John Gee and the forces of darkness. It must have been very stirring, and I wish that I had been there.

(A few churlish knaves in yet another place to which I have access have offered a somewhat different narrative, but, of course, they're biased -- and probably lying, anyway.)

Dan, why weren't you there to provide leadership and keep things under control? How can you be on vacation during this crisis? The people need to know what your plan is to fix this mess.

Edited by Mortal Man
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...