Staff Members Participate in Annual Symposium

Last month, the Church History Department, including many staff members of the Joseph Smith Papers, teamed up with Brigham Young University to host the annual Church History Symposium. This year’s theme was “Financing Faith: The Intersection of Business and Religion.” The two-day conference featured over forty presentations and two keynote addresses that explored the intersection of finance and religion in the church’s first hundred years.
 
Our staff members’ contributions to the symposium are listed below. Click here for a complete schedule of the symposium’s proceedings.
 
Symposium co-chair:
Matthew C. Godfrey
 
Symposium committee member:
Elizabeth A. Kuehn
 
Presenters:

• Joseph F. Darowski: “The Lord’s Way”: Genesis of the Church Security Plan, 1920–1935
• Darcee Barnes: “Spiritual Salvation Plus Temporal Improvement”: Motivations of the Bighorn Basin Colonists of 1900
• Brent M. Rogers: How Much Does a Canal Cost? Mormons and Irrigation Projects in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin
• Elizabeth A. Kuehn: Reconsidering the Salem Revelation and Kirtland’s Financial Narrative, 1836–1838
• Jeffrey D. Mahas: Using the Partridge Estate Papers to Reconstruct a Sacred Mormon City
• Mark Ashurst-McGee and David W. Grua: Joseph Smith’s Tithing Revelation in Context
• Sharalyn D. Howcroft: Business Transactions between Kirtland Firms and New York City Merchants
• Spencer W. McBride: “Our Pecuniary Embarrassments”: Richard M. Young and the Financing of Mormon Redress Efforts, 1839–40
• Alex D. Smith: Joseph Smith’s Commercial Rivalries in Nauvoo
• Brett D. Dowdle: Cooperative Resistance: United Orders, Grange Societies, and Economic Resistance in Utah
• Robin Scott Jensen: Andrew Jenson’s Business Model in Publishing His Church Chronology
• Kiersten Olson: Relief Society, Inc.: Practicing Mormon Femininity in the Marketplace, 1867–1942

Session chairs: Christian K. Heimburger, Christopher James Blythe, Kay Darowski, David W. Grua, Jordan T. Watkins, Brett D. Dowdle, Elizabeth A. Kuehn, Robin Scott Jensen, and Brent M. Rogers