Contributor Bios

Linda Hunter Adams
is a production and copy editor for The Joseph Smith Papers. She received her M.A. and B.A. degrees from Brigham Young University. An associate professor emeritus, she taught at BYU for nearly thirty years. She was codirector of the McGraw-Hill Publishing Institute (1995–2002). She developed the College of Humanities Publications Center in 1983 and directed it for nearly twenty years (1983–2001). She worked with publishers such as Oxford University Press, Yale University Press, Stanford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Princeton University Press, the University of Illinois Press, and other presses in editing books, often in addition designing, typesetting, and preparing camera-ready copy. She has edited more than 300 books and scholarly journals, many on Mormon history, as well as authoring a number of articles. For fifteen years she was an associate editor of BYU Studies. She was president of the Association for Mormon Letters (2006–2007) and a member of the Utah Humanities Council (1985–1992). She received editing awards from BYU Studies and the Utah Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters.
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Richard Lloyd Anderson
is a research historian and review editor for The Joseph Smith Papers. His degrees consist of a B.A., history, Brigham Young University; M.A., classics, BYU; J.D. Harvard Law School; and a Ph.D., ancient history, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Understanding Paul (1983, 2007 rev. ed.), Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage (1971, 2003 rev. ed.), Investigating the Witnesses of the Book of Mormon (1981), study guides on the life and teachings of Christ and early apostles, and many articles on early Christian history and early Mormonism. He is coeditor of the Documentary History of Oliver Cowdery. He served in World War II in the U.S. Navy as an aviation radioman. He retired as emeritus professor, BYU, after nearly forty years of teaching history and religion. Awards include Honors Professor of the Year and Phi Kappa Phi Award for Scholarship and Citizenship.
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Mark Ashurst-McGee
is coeditor of volumes one and three in the Journals Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. A doctoral candidate at Arizona State University with training in U.S. history and religious studies, he trained at the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents in 2005. He has professional editing experience with LDS Church Archives and Deseret Book. He is a published editor of early Mormon documents and author of peer-reviewed articles on early Mormon history. He is also a specialist in documentary editing conventions and transcription methodology.
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Ronald O. Barney
is coeditor of volume five of the Documents Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. He has history degrees from Weber State and Utah State Universities. He has been employed since 1977 as an archivist and historian in the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has worked for the Western Historical Quarterly and has taught as adjunct instructor of history at Weber State University. He has served on the executive board of the Mormon History Association and belongs to Utah Westerners. He has published two books, One Side by Himself: The Life and Times of Lewis Barney, 1808–1894 (2001), winner of the 2002 Evans Biography Award and the 2002 Best Biography Award from the Mormon History Association; and The Mormon Vanguard Brigade of 1847: Norton Jacob’s Record (2005), winner of the 2006 Utah State Historical Society Best Documentary Book Award. He has also published in BYU Studies, the Ensign, and elsewhere.
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Alexander L. Baugh
serves as a coeditor of two volumes in the Documents Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. An associate professor of LDS church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University, he received a B.S. from Utah State University and holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from BYU. His career has included work as an instructor and director for the LDS Church Educational System. He is the editor of Mormon Historical Studies. He has authored and edited a variety of historical articles in such journals as BYU Studies, Nauvoo Journal, and the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, and chapters in various books. He is coeditor of several forthcoming publications. He was editor of Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History, New York–Pennsylvania (2002). The recipient of awards from the Mormon History Association for his scholarly works, he is completing a book manuscript on the Haun’s Mill massacre that occurred in northern Missouri in 1838.
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Joseph I. Bentley
is coeditor of the Legal and Business Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. His B.A. degree is from Brigham Young University. He received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, was executive editor of the Law Review, and authored in 1967 “Presidential Amendment and Termination of Treaties: The Case of the Warsaw Convention.” He also coauthored “Joseph Smith and Legal Process: In the Wake of the Steamboat Nauvoo” with Dallin H. Oaks in the Brigham Young University Law Review (1976) and BYU Studies (1979), then “Legal Trials of Joseph Smith” and “The Martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith” in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism (1990). He retired in 2003 as law partner (real estate practice) after thirty-five years with the international law firm of Latham & Watkins and is currently adjunct professor at the BYU Law School. He is also past chair, International Board of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU.
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Christy L. Best
is a document specialist for The Joseph Smith Papers, providing provenance information for each of the texts. She also provides information on handwriting identification. She received a B.A. degree in history from Brigham Young University and has been an employee of the LDS church’s Church History Department since 1974 and a certified archivist since 1989. Her emphasis as an archivist is on nineteenth-century Mormon manuscripts.
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Richard Lyman Bushman,
a general editor of The Joseph Smith Papers along with Ronald K. Esplin and Dean C. Jessee, is Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia University. He has been appointed Howard W. Hunter visiting professor at Claremont Graduate University for 2008–2009. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He taught at Brigham Young University, Boston University, and the University of Delaware before joining the Columbia faculty. His published works include From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (1967), King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (1985), and The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (1992). He has served as president of the Mormon History Association and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. His books on Mormon themes include Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (2005), Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (1984), and Believing History (2004).
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Jeffrey G. Cannon
is a document specialist, overseeing transcription and document control for the Joseph Smith Papers Project. A graduate student in the Department of Church History and Church Polity at the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Theology, he is currently writing a thesis on the role of religion in Afrikaner ethnic identity and the Afrikaner response to early Latter-day Saint proselytizing in the Cape Colony. His other research interests include the historical development of Mormon liturgy and ecclesiology and Catholic theology and culture. A graduate of Brigham Young University, he did his undergraduate work in political science and African studies while working simultaneously as a teaching assistant in the Department of Political Science and a research assistant for The Joseph Smith Papers.
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Joseph F. Darowski,
with The Joseph Smith Papers since 2002, serves as a coeditor of volume four of the Documents Series. Besides his own historical research, the project’s move to the LDS Church Archives has enabled him to also develop expertise in early Mormon manuscripts. He holds a B.S. from Cornell, an M.A. in history from Brigham Young University, and has done additional graduate work at the College of William and Mary. He earned a diploma from the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, he was a developmental editor for college textbooks.
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Kay Darowski
is a coeditor of volume three in the Documents Series of The Joseph Smith Papers and supervises student research assistants on the project. She has a B.A. in history, coursework completed for an M.A. in history at Brigham Young University, and a diploma from the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has worked at Petersburg National Battlefield in Petersburg, Virginia, and the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. She has been a developmental editor and copy editor for college history textbooks, as well as for other books and articles.
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Karen Lynn Davidson
is coeditor of volume one of the History Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. She received B.A. and M.A. degrees from Brigham Young University and holds a Ph.D. from University of Southern California. She received two postdoctoral fellowships: USC Graduate Dean’s Exchange Fellowship to Cambridge University, England (1971–1972), and NEH Fellowship to University of Chicago (1979–1980). She is a former member of the English faculty and director of the honors program at BYU. She is author of Our Latter-day Hymns: The Stories and the Messages (1988) and coeditor of Out of the Black Patch: The Autobiography of Effie Marquess Carmack (1990).
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Jill Mulvay Derr
a review editor for The Joseph Smith Papers, is a Mormon studies scholar in the Special Projects Division of the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Previously, she was managing director of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History and associate professor of LDS church history at Brigham Young University. She received a B.A. degree from the University of Utah, and the M.A.T. degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is a past president of the Mormon History Association, and her research and publications have focused on the history of Mormon and Utah women. She edited with Kenneth and Audrey Godfrey a collection of excerpts from personal writings, Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (1982; 2000) and coauthored with Janath Russell Cannon and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society (1992; 2000). She is currently collaborating with Karen Lynn Davidson on an annotated edition of the poetry of Eliza R. Snow and writing a biography of Snow.
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Ronald K. Esplin
is a general editor, along with Dean C. Jessee and Richard Lyman Bushman, of The Joseph Smith Papers. He is also the project’s managing editor. He received history degrees from the University of Utah, the University of Virginia, and Brigham Young University. From 1972 until 1980, he was part of the History Division of the LDS church's Historical Department, with assignments both as a researcher and writer and as an archivist. He moved to Brigham Young University in 1980 when the History Division was transferred there to become the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History. From 1986 through 2002, he served as managing director of that research institute and as a professor of church history and doctrine. From 1988 to 1991, he served as one of the editors for Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Most of his publications have involved Brigham Young and early Utah or pre-Utah Mormon history, including Men With A Mission: The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the British Isles, 1837–1841. Many of them also concern Joseph Smith and early Latter-day Saint leadership.
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Steven C. Harper
serves on The Joseph Smith Papers as a coeditor on volumes three and four of the Documents Series and volume one of the Revelations and Translations Series. He is an associate professor of LDS church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. He taught religion and history at BYU–Hawaii from 2000–2001 before joining the BYU faculty in 2002. He earned his Ph.D. in early American history from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He received research fellowships from the Quaker Collection at Haverford College, the Lawrence Henry Gipson Institute for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History. He is the author of Promised Land: Penn's Holy Experiment, the Walking Purchase, and the Dispossession of Delawares 1600–1763 (2006) and articles on early Mormonism and the early American republic that have appeared in Religion and American Culture, Journal of the Early Republic, the Journal of Mormon History, and Mormon Historical Studies. Two of these were awarded the T. Edgar Lyon and Juanita Brooks awards by the Mormon History Association.
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William G. Hartley,
an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, is coeditor of the first two volumes in the Documents Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from BYU and completed doctoral coursework at Washington State University. In 1972 he joined Church Historian Leonard Arrington’s staff of research historians, writing LDS history full time and helping launch the department’s oral history program. In 1980 after the staff transferred to BYU to become the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, he continued writing Mormon history and became an associate professor in the history department where he still serves. His specialty areas include historical development of the priesthood, nineteenth-century Mormon emigration, and family biography writing. He has published fifteen books and more than one hundred articles in academic journals and church magazines and is the recipient of three best book awards and four best article awards from professional organizations. A past president of the Mormon History Association, he has served on editorial boards for the Journal of Mormon History and Mormon Historical Studies.
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Andrew H. Hedges
is coeditor of volume two in the Journals Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. He received a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, an M.A. in Near East studies from Brigham Young University, and a B.S. in zoology from Weber State College. He is an associate professor of LDS church history and doctrine at BYU and has accepted an appointment as editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. He has published a variety of articles on early Mormon history and edited several volumes of scholarly essays, including Disciple as Witness (2000) and Disciple as Scholar (2000).
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Sharalyn D. Howcroft
has been employed by the Church History Department since 2000 as an assistant archivist and document specialist for The Joseph Smith Papers. She is currently locating, identifying, and gathering legal documents in which Joseph Smith is a plaintiff, defendant, or material witness, and organizing information relating to these legal documents in an electronic control file database. She graduated from Brigham Young University with a B.A. degree in English and a Hebrew language minor. After finishing an intensive Hebrew program in the Middle East, she completed an intensive Arabic program that was part of a Middle Eastern languages consortium at the University of Utah.
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Richard L. Jensen
is a senior writer and research historian and review editor for The Joseph Smith Papers. He is a coeditor of volume one of the Journals Series. He has an M.A., history, The Ohio State University; and a B.A., history, Utah State University. He is author, coauthor, coeditor, or translator of books and articles about the history of the Latter-day Saints. He has had a particular interest in Latter-day Saints in and from Europe, particularly in the nineteenth century. He joined the History Division of the Historical Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1972; was transferred in 1980 to Brigham Young University’s Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, where he first became involved with The Joseph Smith Papers; and was transferred again in 2005 to the LDS Church History Department. He has served as book review editor for the Journal of Mormon History, member of the board of the John Whitmer Historical Association, member of the council of the Mormon History Association (MHA), and twice as program cochair for MHA’s annual meeting. He is secretary-treasurer of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study.
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Robin Scott Jensen
is coeditor of volume three in the Journals Series and volume one in the Revelations and Translations Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. He specializes in document and transcription analysis. In 2005 he earned his M.A. degree in American history from Brigham Young University. He completed training at the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents in June 2007. He is currently working on a second M.A. degree in library and information science with an archival concentration from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He has published several articles and edited documents, as well as presented papers at various scholarly conferences.
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Dean C. Jessee
is one of the general editors of The Joseph Smith Papers, with Ronald K. Esplin and Richard Lyman Bushman. He received an M.A. degree in LDS church history from Brigham Young University. His career includes working for the archives and the History Division of the Historical Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1964 to 1981, followed by nineteen years’ service at the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at Brigham Young University. His publications include Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (1984, 2001); Papers of Joseph Smith, vols. 1 and 2 (1989, 1991), Brigham Young’s Letters to His Sons (1974), and numerous articles dealing with aspects of nineteenth-century Mormon history. He is a past president of the Mormon History Association.
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Jeffery O. Johnson
is the program archivist for The Joseph Smith Papers. He earned his B.A. degree in history from Brigham Young University with a minor in library science. During his college years he worked in the Harold B. Lee Library, specializing in cataloging nineteenth-century Mormon manuscripts. In 1969 he was hired at the LDS Church Historian’s Office, where he organized and described manuscripts. On leave in 1980, he worked as the archivist at the Cherokee National Historical Society in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. In 1983, he accepted a position at the Utah State Archives and in 1987 Governor Norman H. Bangerter appointed him Utah state archivist, a position he held for fourteen years. In 2002, he returned to the then Family and Church History Department, successor to the Church Historian’s Office. In 2006, he attended the National Historical Publications and Records Commission’s Institute for Editing of Historical Documents. He has published scholarly papers on LDS history with a special interest in women’s history, plural marriage, and social history. He has also published articles relating to archival issues. He has been active in local and national archival and records management organizations.
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Gordon A. Madsen
serves The Joseph Smith Papers as coeditor of the Legal and Business Series. He received B.S. and J.D. degrees from the University of Utah. He served as Utah deputy district attorney from 1957 to 1959 and as assistant attorney general, 1959–1964. He has been in private practice since 1964. His civic and professional contributions include being a member, Constitutional Revision Commission; member, Judicial Qualifications Commission; member, Judicial Nominating Commission (Third Judicial District); chairman, Eminent Domain Section and Legislative Section of Utah State Bar; and member, Utah House of Representatives, 1969–1971. Among his publications are “State Police Power Held to Override Bankruptcy Act in Financial Responsibility Case,” Personal Finance Law Quarterly 16.3 (Summer 1962): 97–100; “Joseph Smith’s 1826 Trial: The Legal Setting,” BYU Studies, 30.2 (Spring 1990): 91–108; and “Joseph Smith and the Missouri Court of Inquiry,” BYU Studies 43.4 (2004): 93–136.
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Rachel M. Osborne
serves as a production editor, training and overseeing a team of source checkers. The recipient of a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University, she currently resides in Salt Lake City while pursuing an M.A. degree in history from the University of Utah. She worked as an editorial assistant for BYU Studies in 2005.
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Max H. Parkin
is a coeditor of volumes three and four of the Document Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. He received a B.S. degree in business from the University of Utah, an M.A. from Brigham Young University in history and philosophy of religion, and a Ph.D. from BYU in LDS church history and doctrine. His thesis and dissertation were on aspects of the Latter-day Saints in Kirtland, Ohio, and Missouri, respectively. Some of his writings include Conflict at Kirtland (1967), a history of the Latter-day Saints in Ohio; and Sacred Places—Missouri, a history of Mormon sites in Missouri and Kansas. He has published articles in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Historical Atlas of Mormonism, the Encyclopedia of LDS History, and Regional Studies in Church History—Missouri, as well as in LDS church magazines and professional journals. He authored a chapter in Restoration Movement, a history text for the Community of Christ’s (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) Graceland College. He served a research mission in the Museum of Church History and Art about Kirtland lands, was a lecturer on Sea Trek 2001, and taught for the Church Educational System for fifty years (professionally for thirty-eight years and twelve years as a volunteer), principally at the Institute of Religion at the University of Utah,.
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Sarah Gibby Peris
is a production and copy editor for The Joseph Smith Papers. After working as an editor for BYU Independent Study for three years, she completed an internship as an editorial assistant for the LDS church�s Curriculum Department. She also worked for Deseret Book as a publishing intern. Her research experience includes documenting Latter-day Saint history in Germany during WWII. She earned a B.A. degree in English from Brigham Young University with minors in editing and German.
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Heather M. Seferovich
splits her time between working as production and copy editor on The Joseph Smith Papers and her duties as senior executive editor at BYU Studies. She earned an M.A. in American social history and a B.A. in history at Brigham Young University. Her research has focused on Mormon, southern U.S., western U.S., and Native American history. In addition to winning state grants and writing lesson plans for elementary and secondary students, she has published encyclopedia and magazine articles, textbook modules, family histories, and tourist brochures. She originally was hired at BYU to work on The Story of Masada and The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibitions and was a member of the exhibition steering committees. In her position as coordinator of public programs at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures, she team taught museum practices classes, trained docents, gave gallery tours, and oversaw public relations efforts. In 1999 she accepted an editing position at BYU Studies, where she worked on publications for the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History. Since that time she has edited over fifty books on Mormon history.
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Alex D. Smith
is coeditor of volume two in the Journals Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. He received M.A. (2002) and B.A. (1998) degrees in history from Brigham Young University. He was a research historian and document editor with the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, where he first began working for the Papers. His research interests include LDS church history, musicology, and nineteenth-century British literature. He also serves as a photographer for The Joseph Smith Papers.
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R. Eric Smith,
an editor for the LDS church's Curriculum Department, is senior production and copy editor for The Joseph Smith Papers. He chairs the project’s style committee. He has significant research and editing experience in early Mormon history and is the editor of numerous documents and other materials published in print or electronically. He practiced law for a Salt Lake City firm and served as an editorial assistant for the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and for the Utah Law Review. He received a B.A. degree in English from Brigham Young University and a J.D. from the University of Utah.
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Steven R. Sorensen,
a coeditor of the fifth volume in the Documents Series of The Joseph Smith Papers, received a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in library science from Brigham Young University. After working in BYU’s special collections library, he began working for the LDS church's Historical Department in 1980. He served for sixteen years as director of the LDS Church Archives. A recipient of the Leonard J. Arrington Award from the Mormon History Association, he is currently academic editor for LDS history for BYU Studies. He has served on institutional committees in Utah to promote professionalism and cooperation among the state's manuscript repositories and other historical agencies.
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Morris A. Thurston
is coeditor of The Joseph Smith Papers’ Legal and Business Series. He holds a B.A. from Brigham Young University and a J.D from Harvard Law School. A retired partner of the global law firm of Latham & Watkins, he specialized in litigation and counseling in trademark and copyright law. Currently, he is adjunct professor, J. Reuben Clark Law School, BYU. He is the author of Tora Thurston: The History of a Norwegian Pioneer (1996); “A Bundle of Rights,” Journal of Mormon History (Spring 2002); and “O Say What Is Truth” (2001); coauthor (with wife, Dawn) of Breathe Life into Your Life Story: How to Write a Story People Will Want to Read (2007); and a frequent lecturer on writing, especially personal and family history.
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Grant Underwood
heads up a team working on the first two volumes of the Documents Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA, his M.A. and B.A. degrees from Brigham Young University. He is a professor of history at BYU. He is author of the prize-winning Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (1993), editor of two volumes on LDS history in the Pacific (2000), and author of a number of articles on Mormon history.
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Nathan N. Waite
is a production editor for The Joseph Smith Papers. He received a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University and is pursuing an M.A. in American studies at the University of Utah. He has written and edited for BYU Magazine, the Ensign, and other publications. Most recently he worked as an editor and sales manager for Boston publisher David R. Godine.
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Jeffrey N. Walker
is the series manager and coeditor of the Legal and Business Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. He completed a B.S. from Western Michigan University and subsequently earned a J.D. from the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, where he served as an editor for the Brigham Young University Law Review. He currently serves as adjunct professor in the Department of Church History and Doctrine and the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU. He practiced in Los Angeles with one of the largest West Coast law firms before joining the Salt Lake City law firm of Jones, Waldo, Holbrook & McDonough. He has worked as general counsel for a regional healthcare company, a national consultant for Lexis/Nexis, and as a founding partner of the law firm Holman & Walker. He is the president and coowner of Western Architectural Services, a thematic manufacturing company located in Draper, Utah, and a founder of the national watch store chain, Precision Time. He is also a trustee and treasurer for the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation and the managing editor of Mormon Historical Studies.
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John W. Welch
is a consulting scholar for The Joseph Smith Papers. He is the
Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, where he teaches nineteenth-century American legal history, biblical law, and various tax courses. He attended BYU (B.A. in history; M.A. in Latin and Greek), studied Greek philosophy at Oxford University, and received his law degree from Duke University, where he served as the articles editor for the Duke Law Journal. He practiced law in Los Angeles, where he organized the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). From 1988–1991 he served as one of the editors for Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of Mormonism, and since 1991 has served as the editor-in-chief of BYU Studies and was the publisher for the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History. He was one of the organizers of the bicentennial conference for Joseph Smith at the Library of Congress. For many years he has been the general editor of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. His publications include “Bible in American Law,” in Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties (2006); The Worlds of Joseph Smith: A Bicentennial Conference at the Library of Congress (2006); Opening the Heavens (2005); the Journals of William E. McLellin (1994); and many other books and articles about LDS scriptures.
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David L. Willden
serves as the program manager of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. His career includes work as a senior management advisor to the director of a federal agency; managing consultant, director, and vice president of international consulting firms; and a business owner. He has an M.S. in administration from The Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. from Brigham Young University.
David J. Whittaker
is coeditor of volume one of the History Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. He is curator of nineteenth-century western and Mormon manuscripts, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library; and associate professor of history, Brigham Young University. He holds a Ph.D. in American history (BYU) and has authored or coauthored five books and about fifty articles in Mormon history. He was a Frederick W. Beinecke Fellow in western Americana, at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, 1990; and held a Senior Scholar, William F. Fulbright Fellowship, David and Mary Eccles Centre for American Studies, The British Library, London, 1993–1994. He served as president of the Mormon History Association from 1995 to 1996. He served as an area director and institute director for the LDS Church Educational System in southern California from 1970 to 1976 and has been the academic director of eight BYU London Study Abroad programs.
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Robert J. Woodford
is a coeditor for volumes one and two of the Documents Series and volume one of the Revelations and Translations Series of The Joseph Smith Papers. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Brigham Young University in Bible and modern scripture and wrote the dissertation “The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants.” He has taught the Doctrine and Covenants and LDS church history for over forty years, particularly at the Institute of Religion at the University of Utah, LDS Business College, and the Joseph Smith Academy at Nauvoo. Concurrently, he taught at BYU Salt Lake Center for over twenty-five years and at the BYU Provo campus for two years. He has authored several articles for the Ensign, BYU Studies, and other publications.
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