The Book of Mormon, first published by Joseph Smith, Jr. in 1830 in Palmyra, New York, draws upon colonial and antebellum biblical hermeneutics and nineteenth century myths of the origin and fate of an ancient American civilization of Mound Builders to construct a textual image …
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This thesis includes the narratives of three Burmese Muslim refugee mothers who made their homes in Logan, Utah, within three years of locating in the United States. Each woman's life is written about in a different style of writing—journalism, ethnography and creative nonfictio…
Despite public fascination with Mormon garments, scholarly literature on them is almost nonexistent. What literature does exist on garments is primarily concerned with women's experiences of garments, and focuses on them primarily in terms of modesty and sexuality. I am interest…
A Dogged Resolve is an analytical micro-history of the theology and marital practices among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1841 to 1890. In the spring of 1841, Joseph Smith, Church founder and leader, took another wife; an act which launched a lo…
This collection of essays explores my experience as a gay Mormon missionary, when I studied the Mormon Church’s Addiction Recovery Program in an attempt to alter my sexuality. The initial four essays take place during the two years that I lived in Southern California as a Mormon…
This study aimed to provide insights into the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer/questioning (LGBQ) people within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (CJCLDS), and to explore how aspects of sexuality and religiousness relate to suicidal ideation. Through…
This thesis is the first part of what I envision to be a full-length memoir. I focus throughout on multiple themes, primarily what it meant to grow up gay in a culture, state, religion, and society where others told me I was wrong to be such. I explore these themes linearly thro…
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always been an apocalyptic religion since its founding in 1830. Yet, Mormons have never sat idly by waiting for Christ to return. Rather, the leadership and the laity developed a nationalistic eschatology that required particip…
What are the reasons ex-Mormons give for why they leave their religion? This study identifies what causes Mormons to lose their religion—or to use an ex-Mormon parlance—causes their shelf to break, by analyzing online deconversion narratives posted on the exmormon subreddit foru…
Wingfield S. Watson (1828–1922) was a fiercely loyal apologist for the Mormon prophet James J. Strang, a successor to Joseph Smith. In the aftermath of the succession crisis that followed Smith’s unexpected death, Strang attracted hundreds of converts to his theocratic commune o…
The collective memory of persecution as formulated by Parley P. Pratt in his autobiography impacted the Mormon community for generations. With the help of theorists Maurice Halbwachs, Jan Assman, and others to explain collective memory and how it is transmitted, this dissertatio…
Roman Catholics and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are both inclusivist religions, holding that theirs is Christ’s true church while acknowledging ways for those outside their institutional boundaries to still be saved. The largest group of those outs…