Scholars & Saints
Scholars & Saints is the official podcast of the University of Virginia’s Mormon Studies program, housed in the Department of Religious Studies. Scholars & Saints is a venue of public scholarship that promotes respectful dialogue about Latter Day Saint traditions among laypersons and academics.
Scholars & Saints
The Artistic Expressions of Latter-day Saints (feat. Mason Allred & Amanda Beardsley)
In a world where new forms of media have enabled the artistic expression of numerous cultures and experiences, the question must be asked: how do the millions of Latter-day Saints around the globe define themselves artistically?
This question is tackled by many Mormon Studies scholars in the 2024 book, Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader. The book's editors, Mason Allred and Amanda Beardsley, sit down with host Nicholas Shrum for this episode of Scholars & Saints. Together, they discuss the diverse nature of global Latter-day Saint paintings, film, architecture, and other visual media. They also examine the universal themes that arise in this artwork—themes that relate to broader Mormon experiences. While they don't wish to create a canon of Latter-day Saint art, both Allred and Beardsley discuss the impact they hope this book will have as the first critical treatment of Mormon works of art.
Mason Allred is the Associate Professor of Communcation, Media, and Culture at Brigham Young University-Hawaii.
Amanda Beardsley is the Cayleff and Sakai Faculty Scholar in Women's Studies at San Diego State University.
Introduction
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Nicholas Shrum
You're listening to Scholars and Saints. The UVA Mormon Studies podcast. I'm your host, Nicholas Shrum, a PhD candidate in American religions at the University of Virginia. On this podcast, we dive into the academic study of Mormonism. We engage recent and classic scholarship, interview prominent and up-and-coming thinkers in the field, and reflect on Mormonism relevance to the broader study of religion. cholars, and Saints is brought to you by support from the Richard Lyman Bushman Endowed Professorship of Mormon Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.
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Nicholas Shrum
The podcast’s goal is to discuss some of the most pressing issues and cutting edge methods in Mormon studies, and put them in conversation with scholarship from the discipline of religious studies. While the podcast’s content explores Mormonism, the views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any organizations they represent or study, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the University of Virginia.
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Nicholas Shrum
Today on the podcast, I speak with Professor Amanda Beardsley, the Cayleff and Sakai Faculty Scholar in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at San Diego State University, and Professor Mason Allred, Associate Professor of Communication, Media and Culture at Brigham Young University, Hawaii. Amanda and Mason are the editors of Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader, a collection of 22 essays written by scholars from a variety of disciplines, published with Oxford University Press in 2024.
00;01;30;22 - 00;01;52;09
Nicholas Shrum
On the episode today, we discuss the origins of this ambitious project along with its themes, content, and contributions to Mormon studies. The book focuses on visual art, especially painting, sculpture, photography, film, architecture, exhibitions, and various material and cultural products as it seeks to capture what Latter-day Saint art has meant historically, and what it means for contemporary Mormonism and its future trajectories.
00;01;52;11 - 00;02;12;20
Nicholas Shrum
It asks important questions about Mormon identity and institutions, the faith's history, globalization, assimilation, and distinctiveness. In the episode Amanda and Mason give listeners a taste of the contents of the book and the arguments the essays make, hopefully encouraging listeners to pick up a copy themselves and see what it has to offer. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Amanda Beardsley and Mason Allred
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Nicholas Shrum
Welcome everybody to another episode of Scholars and Saints, the UVA Mormon Studies Podcast. Today we are going to be speaking with Professor Amanda Beardsley, who is the Cayleff and Sakai Faculty Scholar in Women's Studies at San Diego State University. And Professor Mason, Allredt, who is an Associate Professor of Communication, Media and Culture at Brigham Young University-Hawaii.
00;02;43;07 - 00;03;21;07
Nicholas Shrum
Today we're going to be talking abou ta recently published book with Oxford University Press in 2024 entitled Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader. And Professor Beardsley and Professor Allred are the editors of this collection, and really excited to have them on the podcast to talk about the scope of this project, kind of what went into it, along with the content and how they envision it being used, and the kinds of interventions it makes into the study of Mormonism and Mormon studies, as well as art history and media studies and other disciplines that they have expertise in.
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Nicholas Shrum
So welcome to the podcast. Excited to have you.
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Amanda Beardsley
Thank you so much, Nicholas. It's a pleasure to be here.
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Mason Allred
Yeah. Happy to be here to talk with you about this book today, Nicholas.
Professor Allred and Professor Beardsley’s Backgrounds
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Nicholas Shrum
Excellent. So to start off, it would be great to have both of you introduce yourselves. Perhaps, Amanda, we could start with you. Just talk about your your education, previous projects, and your current positions. What you what you're currently doing.
00;03;49;06 - 00;04;25;12
Amanda Beardsley
Yeah. So, I come from an art historical background. I got my PhD in 2019 from Binghamton University.. And after that Covid hit and I ended up somehow at San Diego State University in their gender studies program. And, in that time, my dissertation looked at technology, specifically sound– how sound technologies intersect wit, religion and Mormonism.
00;04;25;12 - 00;04;56;00
Amanda Beardsley
And so I trace a history from the 19th century until the 20th century of how sound impacts identity formation, including gender. But, it's kind of a weird duck of a project in art history, since I'm looking at sound and not a lot of art historians look at sound, usually they are looking at the visual arts or sculpture,.
00;04;56;00 - 00;05;31;24
Amanda Beardsley
But, yeah, I think of it like if we were to look at a landscape and analyze it through the lens of art history, I'm kind of doing the same with soundscapes. How do those environments impact how we move through space and whose sounds get prioritized? And weirdly, when I started my research on it, I found that Mormonism had a lot of people who developed sound, so like, Harvey Fletcher, the father of stereophonic sound.
00;05;31;24 - 00;06;19;15
Amanda Beardsley
And Vern Knutson, the father of architectural acoustics, and also the inventor of the headphones were all Mormon. And so I was like, there's got to be something here about sound in America, specifically that is less secular than we write it to be. And so that's kind of where I began this journey. And then in 2019, right when I was finishing my dissertation, Laura Allred Hurtado reached out to me and Mason, she is the Executive Director at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and her and I go way back, and she brought us on to this project that she,
00;06;19;15 - 00;06;48;16
Amanda Beardsley
Glen Nelson, and Richard Bushman bega byputting together, a syllabi on what would a Mormon art history look like and what would those texts involve, and how would we kind of set the parameters. And so, yeah, that's that's how I got involved in the project. And, Mason and I, we met each other the Mormon Historical Association years before that.
00;06;48;16 - 00;07;19;21
Amanda Beardsley
And I was fangirling over Mason's work becausewe are both inmedia studies. And so I was like, okay, I want to know this guy and hopefully collaborate with him one day. And so, when Covid hit, Laura had to depart from the project as the project manager for the book, or editor, I guess, and she asked Mason and I to step in as the coeditors, which we felt very privileged to do.
00;07;19;21 - 00;07;36;20
Amanda Beardsley
And so, that was an , an unexpected way that Mason and I were able to kind of find our way to work on something together.I'll pass it to Mason.
00;07;36;22 - 00;07;57;12
Mason Allred
Yeah. So, I come from a strange background to this project. And if Amanda was over there thinking about these Mormon inventions and innovations around sound, I was interested in Mormon innovations and inventions around visual culture. So if she's looking at like headphones, I was interested in Philo Farnsworth and television and things like this.
00;07;57;14 - 00;08;16;16
Mason Allred
So I am much more focused in my media studies background on visual culture, because I kind of come from more like film studies and media studies. So my original degree as an undergraduate here at BYU-Hawai’i, was in history, with like cultural studies. And then I went to grad school at UC Berkeley, where I focused on actually, it was in a German department.
00;08;16;16 - 00;08;41;05
Mason Allred
So it's mostly German film and media studies. That was my designated emphasis for media studies. And so when I came out of grad school, my first book was out of my dissertation, which was on like Ernst Lubitsch and historical films after World War One. But I had taken a position at the Joseph Smith papers, so I was working as a historian and editor at the Joseph Smith Papers for three years, which in itself already seemed like a strange thing to do.
00;08;41;06 - 00;09;14;07
Mason Allred
A kind of detour in my career. But that project, much like this book we're discussing today, I was just so interested in and thought was so important that I really wanted to be a part of it. So that was a huge help. It was very, very much beneficial to work there, in a sense. I had access to these archives and an opportunity to work through so many sources that were helpful for the project itself, but also for research interests that I had that then led into my next book which came out a couple of years ago, I titled Seeing Things, which was on sort of ways that Latter-Day Saints have
00;09;14;07 - 00;09;36;15
Mason Allred
used different media technologies to provoke, disseminate, and share visions. So I was really interested in the kind of visionary culture of Mormonism, from the supernatural to the technological, and how those are sort of inseparable, as Amanda was hinting at in her sound studies work. So I've done that kind of stuff, and I always had a foot in Latter-day Saint history, Mormon studies, this kind of thing.
00;09;36;17 - 00;09;56;16
Mason Allred
Interested in both and bringing them together is a delight for me, which we got to do some of that in this work here. I too, yeah, we had met, as Amanda said, and we wanted to kind of work together on something like a conference or a book or an article or something. So this was a great opportunity. It was unexpected in the sense that we were both invited to write chapters, and we can talk about those chapters later individually.
00;09;56;19 - 00;10;13;17
Mason Allred
But then at this critical turning point where we were asked, to come together and co-edit this thing, it was it was a bit of a daunting task, but it was also exciting because, I knew that Amanda was up to the task, and I was trying to figure out where that was going to work into my workflow and life at the time.
00;10;13;17 - 00;10;41;15
Mason Allred
But luckily, everything kind of fell into place, and it was a really honestly, it was arduous, no joke, but it was a really enjoyable process where I think I learned a lot. And I can't say enough about Amanda and her work ethic and attention to detail and insights, and also the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. We got to mention them because of the donors and the funding and the support and all that came from Glen Nelson and Richard Bushman and Mykkal Urbina, all of them over there.
00;10;41;17 - 00;10;57;28
Mason Allred
So that's kind of how we came to this project that was already sort of envisioned, as Amanda mentioned, through Laura Hurtado and Glenn. And then we jumped in, late in the game, but not too late. We still got to do a lot of the revising and editing and figuring out what this thing was actually going to be like.
00;10;58;00 - 00;11;22;17
Nicholas Shrum
Awesome. Thank you both for telling us about your backgrounds and for those that are long time or longtime-ish listeners of the podcast, you'll notice that Mason is a repeat feature on the podcast. He was recently or a couple of years ago talking about his book, Seeing Things with the previous host, Stephen Betts. And so glad to have him back and hopefully we can have Amanda back as well for future projects.
The Inspiration for and Goals of Latter Day Saint Art: A Critical Reader
00;11;22;17 - 00;11;44;12
Nicholas Shrum
And we can keep this going. But thank you for also kind of talking about the background of this project itself, we mentioned the center for Latter-day Saint Art with Glenn Nelson and Richard Bushman, and I'm wondering if you can take just a couple more minutes to talk about the ideas for the project.
00;11;44;14 - 00;12;07;21
Nicholas Shrum
I'm not sure if we've had an edited collection on the podcast before, but maybe you can talk about kind of-, this isn't just one person's monograph with their extension of their dissertation or just a project that they have by themselves. This is a much bigger, trying to leave a stamp, or get an idea of how an entire field has been developing.
00;12;07;24 - 00;12;26;18
Nicholas Shrum
I wonder if you can one of you or both of you speak to how the Center for Latter-day Saint Art, the originators of the project and then yourselves, as you started editing it and working with all these authors, how did you think about what this project was trying to do for the field?
00;12;26;20 - 00;12;46;21
Mason Allred
I'll go first and Amanda can fill in, so you can think about it sort of like this. The Center for Latter-day Saint Arts had already been running for quite some time, right? They had gotten some good funding going through donations and done a lot of hard work to try to get more visibility of just what was going on, to kind of get their finger on the pulse of Latter-day Saint art and build a community around them.
00;12;46;23 - 00;13;01;28
Mason Allred
And that's actually been really wonderful, what they've been able to pull off on that level. So when it came to this book and they were starting to conceptualize, like, how would it work, what would it cover, what would be the topics? Who are the scholars that we can reach out to to help us to put this together?
00;13;02;00 - 00;13;24;11
Mason Allred
It brought some of the work they'd already done on a more, let's say, like, community level up into more of an academic project. We were asking experts in the field to critically analyze these works, which hadn't quite been done on that level or to that magnitude, as you see in this book. So at that point, it means bringing a whole bunch of people together, to make this happen.
00;13;24;11 - 00;13;42;20
Mason Allred
And luckily, getting someone like Oxford University Press on board to make that happenThe individual topics then it was never thought of as like, a chronological history of art and Mormonism like, they just weren't going to do it like that. Laura didn't see it that way. Glenn didn't see it that way. So it was topical from the get-go.
00;13;42;22 - 00;13;58;29
Mason Allred
And based on, I think what they felt like kind of needed to be covered or should be covered. And then based on expertise of people, they could reach out, they could do that. So they kind of had that list of the usual suspects, and then a few more that they were hoping to get on board to do this thing.
00;13;59;01 - 00;14;22;03
Mason Allred
So that's kind of in-place when Amanda and I are brought in, it's like, let's cover these topics and ask these people if they can do it, if they have time, they've done similar work or something adjacent to it or this, but they're going to expand it. Bring that together and turn it into this, you know, really rigorous academic book that would have a new sense of breadth and depth in Mormonart.
00;14;22;03 - 00;14;57;22
Mason Allred
And the idea, I think, for Glenn, was always that you would try to move the needle just a little bit, what's understood and what we can even do with Mormon art at this point. And so this brings this a book like thisnot to like the coffee table, but into, like the classroom and can be used in, say, a religious studies course or an art history course or a media studies course, or even just cultural studies, because the way that art is treated in this book, it brings from all these different strands of disciplines to where we kind of recenter it as pivotal in expressing
00;14;57;22 - 00;15;17;08
Mason Allred
Latter-day Saint identity. Community, you know, trying to get at the divine and all these things. It's almost like in a Freudian way of thinking about culture, where it's like it's a window into their subconscious, really. There's just so much to be gained by paying attention to the art, and with the kind of care and rigor that I don't think we've seen quite before on this level.
00;15;17;10 - 00;15;39;11
Mason Allred
So I see it working like that. Pulling from what they've done before and then expanding it in an academic way, bringing it all together in this great book that can be used as a kind of reference work you can jump around from chapter tohapter doesn't need to be read in order, but certainly belongs in the classroom, will hopefully inspire more work beyond it as people start to see, oh, that tnspired , that sparks an idea that this needs to be done now.
00;15;39;11 - 00;15;49;13
Mason Allred
Or what if I take that and apply that over here in this Protestant context? I'm hoping it has those kinds of reaches to it. What do you think, Amanda, though, where kind of came from, where we're at?
00;15;49;15 - 00;16;20;13
Amanda Beardsley
Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question. It's evolved in mine, in Mason's hands, we were able to, you know, it was organized slightly differently before and semi-chronological, but still thematically within a rough chronology. And I think when we finally were able to work with all of the authors we had a workshop with them out in Salt Lake. Laura
00;16;20;13 - 00;16;55;00
Amanda Beardsley
And the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art were really generous in lending the space. he Center for Latter-day Saints Arts was also generous in bringing us together. In this workshop, Mason and I realized that there were certain themes that emerged that also allowed us a bit of a rough chronology. And so, that emerged organically after a reading what some of these different voices and scholars and disciplinary frameworks brought to bear on it.
00;16;55;02 - 00;17;22;16
Amanda Beardsley
Another huge task for us in looking at the history of art history within Mormonism, was that–and I think this is for Mormon studies in general–has been kind of a question ofhow biased is it if it's coming from a Mormon background or a Latter-day Saint author, is that going to only reflect those biases?
00;17;22;16 - 00;18;00;14
Amanda Beardsley
And that's what we found when we looked at a lot of the art historical texts that were huge contributions, but nevertheless kind of espoused how this art could bring you closer to the faith in some form or another. And so I think the academic treatment of it too allowed us some critical distance and alongside, the multiple voices that we were able to do because one of the most difficult things about writing a book like this that I don't know, posits a canon, right, for like, art history.
00;18;00;14 - 00;18;44;06
Amanda Beardsley
So this is the canon of art in Mormonism usually comes in, like you were saying, Nicholas, from like a monograph. Right? Like it comes from a single voice. And so, what I really love about this project was that we were able to have all of those different voices to show how complex it is to define a field, and that was something Mason and I were, forthrightly, very intentional about from the beginning was like, we don't want to kind of confine this to one thing.How do you define Mormon art is a very complicated question, and a lot of people have tried to
00;18;44;06 - 00;19;09;06
Amanda Beardsley
get at it from differentperspectives and angles,including some of our authors. And so, we wanted to bring up more questions than we wanted to have answers for. And that's where the criticality kind of lies, allowing you,the reader, to have the information and then to kind of come to their own conclusions to some extent.
00;19;09;06 - 00;19;30;22
Amanda Beardsley
Being able to see it also widely used either in the classroom or for research or as a coffee table book, you know, like, I think all of those are applicable uses that we were hoping to have with it.
00;19;30;25 - 00;20;06;28
Nicholas Shrum
Thank you both for commenting on that angle of trying to understand where this project comes from and also kind of its intentions in its vision. I was incredibly struck reading this book because I had just finished my comprehensive exams and in American religious history and race and ethnicity and American religion and method and theory. And one of the things that I liken it to after reading this, and maybe this is hyperbole, but the impact of this book, I think is so important for Mormon studies.
00;20;07;00 - 00;20;29;24
Nicholas Shrum
I liken it to Thomas Tweed's Renarrating US Religious History because of exactly what you were both talking about, this idea that it defies canon. It is not just about that these are the, you know, for members of the church that are familiar with how the institutional church thinks about art, it's canonized. This is acceptable. This is what can be used.
00;20;29;27 - 00;20;59;16
Nicholas Shrum
Right? This project from the get-go defies canon and definitions, and is more of an invitation to think broadly and critically about what art does and how it intersects with these various communities. And so I really, really appreciate that, along with how hearing about this process, with the workshops and meeting with people and talking about this outside of just your Microsoft Word documents, right, that this is something that you guys were thinking about.
00;20;59;19 - 00;21;20;00
Nicholas Shrum
The various themes that we'll talk about in just a little bit that I see is similar to how that workshop worked with Tweed's project and effectively reoriented the field of American religious history. And the Latter-day Saint Art Critical Reader establishing the field of Mormon art history within Mormon studies in a very powerful way.
The Difficulties of Defining Mormon Art
00;21;20;00 - 00;21;56;18
Nicholas Shrum
So that's my personal thank you, for you taking on this project and navigating it so well. Really quickly, you did mention, I believe, Amanda, you had mentioned the trickiness with defining, right? You argue in the introduction, before you dive into the essays that the book “should both shave off the accretion of traditional and confining conceptions of Mormon art and expand our imagination of its power and potential to shape identity, experience, and community with others as well as the divine.”
00;21;56;21 - 00;22;17;29
Nicholas Shrum
So I'm wondering if you could just say a little bit more about this tricky landscape of trying to define something like Mormon art and how did you, kind of, settle that question? Where does it rest? As the reader reads the introduction, how are they going to approach the rest of the essays about what constitutes Mormon art?
00;22;18;01 - 00;22;22;12
Nicholas Shrum
Maybe. Amanda, we can start with you. And then Mason, if you have comments as well.
00;22;22;14 - 00;22;53;08
Amanda Beardsley
Yeah. The way that we approach this, I thought was really cool. We looked at J. Kirk Richards’ work [Untitled (Christo Series), 2013], where hepaints a lot of kind of blurry Jesus portraits. Right. And, for me, that work really demonstrates this quote where it's like we have our preconceived notions of what Jesus might look like.
00;22;53;08 - 00;23;22;19
Amanda Beardsley
And usually that comes from visual culture. Right? And so I think of Del Parsonsand, the Jesus “yearbook photo,” (what, Terryl Givens calls) That image is so prolific in modern culture. And that [work]gives us an image or a definition of that religious entity or idea, right, of Jesus–that gives a face to the name.
00;23;22;19 - 00;23;51;29
Amanda Beardsley
And so J. Kirk Richards, he gives us a blurry kind of definition. And part of that work was created in collaboration with community too. And, the end product is a lot of images all together lots of portraits of Christ that look very different, right, in his Cristo series.
00;23;51;29 - 00;24;22;03
Amanda Beardsley
And so I see that being an analog or some sort or metaphor for how we wanted to kind of draw on familiarity. There's a language that we're working with already within the religion and within the community that people arevery familiar with. And then we also wanted to kind of, you know, because Jesus is also a very personal construct for ourselves,
00;24;22;03 - 00;24;55;25
Amanda Beardsley
r or concept or belief or faithful kind of thing, you know, allow room for that too, and allow for, healthy debate within the kind of larger community. And so, shaving off raditional and confining conceptions of more Mormon art and allowing ourselves to give critique as well of those kind of models that have already been in place.
00;24;55;27 - 00;25;22;12
Amanda Beardsley
And I mean, that'sthe platform, right? That's thejumping off point usually that anyone has when they're looking at disciplinary frames that are supposed to shore up any topic, create, or define it. an example of this might be that, like, Mormon art would only be art created by artists who are Mormon.
00;25;22;14 - 00;25;52;05
Amanda Beardsley
Right? And we know that that's just not true. The Christusstatue, which has been really, really popular in Mormon culture, was not created by someone who identified as Mormon. And so expanding the definitions to allow for that kind of flexibility because that statue itself is so influential.
00;25;52;05 - 00;26;13;29
Amanda Beardsley
It's in the Temple Square Visitor Center. We have to think about that expansion of our art history, of our artists, of our identities, and where those of are in flux too. And I'm sure Mason can expand on that a little bit too.
00;26;14;02 - 00;26;39;27
Mason Allred
Yeah. No, I totally agree. That was the hope. Right. And I think that what I hope you feel throughout the book is that what we kind of mean by that quote at the end of the introduction and what we're playing off of,Richard's, untitled Cristo series with, is that, by shaking up some of our more rigid ways of thinking or some traditions around what preconceived notions about Mormon art might be,
00;26;39;29 - 00;26;59;02
Mason Allred
it allows, I think, the authors to really dig in on specificity about, okay, so what makes this Mormon? How is it drawing from a “Mormon” experience? Or how is this supposed to be a portrayal of Mormons from the outside, whatever it is, digging in deep on that specificity gets so deep that the other end of that tunnel ends up being like the human condition.
00;26;59;07 - 00;27;17;24
Mason Allred
It actually goes huge, right? So I think the specificity is important because then connects you not into that community, but also back to just what it means to be a human trying to do some of these things, which is like exercise faith, connect with other people, deal with insecurity. Like all these things show up in Mormon ways, but they connect it back out to the outside world.
00;27;17;24 - 00;27;46;18
Mason Allred
So it seems like it's more of a national American thing, or it's more of a global thing or whatever it is. So by trying to be as open minded as we could in the way we approached delineating Mormon art, I hope it does just that. The book feels like, oh yeah, this is definitely about Mormon art, but it does so much more than that in the sense that it will hopefully inspire other ways of thinking in other disciplines and go beyond just being confined to“only” Mormon art, you know what I mean?
00;27;46;20 - 00;27;54;13
Mason Allred
So that's what I hope we managed to do, to scrape off what we thought we had. And you recognize it's actually much more expansive and brighter than you thought.
Highlighted Essays from the Book
00;27;54;16 - 00;28;22;10
Nicholas Shrum
Absolutely. Thank you both for that. So let's get into some of the content, of the edited collection. We can do this a number of ways, but maybe I can just introduce the themes so that, from your introduction, you know, that we it talks about aesthetics and theology, image-making space, institutions, identity and,exhibition and display.
00;28;22;13 - 00;28;40;18
Nicholas Shrum
And I'm wondering if you all have particular essays that you feel maybe exemplify this in a particular way that can give listeners a taste of what they might encounter, when they inevitably go out and buy the book and start reading it.
00;28;40;20 - 00;28;43;12
Mason Allred
So maybe we'll just, like, go back and forth?
00;28;43;15 - 00;28;43;26
Nicholas Shrum
That sounds great.
00;28;43;26 - 00;29;10;06
Mason Allred
I mean, the nice thing is, is they're all great and we love you them all. So you can like, just do it like the old school songbook and just put your finger anywhere and it'd be good. But yeah. So if we start it in a way that we, as we said, we tried to have these kind of constellations around topics or themes and I will say as far as structure, we did approach it thematically like that, to not be too linear or anything like that, but within those constellations, they do show up chronologically.
Terryl Givens and Art as Theology
00;29;10;06 - 00;29;29;17
Mason Allred
So there's a nice kind of build that way to for the historians out there. So for this first section, we start with art as theology. And, I'll maybe just start talking a little bit about Terryl Givens, which is where the book begins. Some of you may be familiar with his previous work, which is immense, but one of his books A People of Paradox, gets at
00;29;29;17 - 00;29;49;10
Mason Allred
this idea that he'd been working on, where there's these internal paradoxes about the way that Latter-day Saints, sort of think and behave, and it's sort of central to their theology and culture. So he then takes this and applies it to some artwork, and it really ends up being a fascinating chapter. To start the book off, he looks at these two key tensions.
00;29;49;10 - 00;30;12;08
Mason Allred
He's noticing in Latter-day Saint art. One is the balance between being a kind of in-group that wants to gather and be cohesive together, but then also deal with assimilation with the larger culture. Like, how do you navigate that line and how is that showing up in your artwork that wants to be, like we said earlier, wants to be particularly Mormon for this small in-group and audience, but maybe also speak to the larger art community.
00;30;12;15 - 00;30;48;21
Mason Allred
What's the art world doing? How do I fit in there? So that's a fascinating way to think about Mormon art. The second thing he looks at is this kind of penchant, you see, within the Mormon theology of collapsing the sacred and profane as the way he puts it, I don't think we've mentioned very much of the detailed individual artworks, but let me just mention one photograph he talks about because it's so Mormon and that is the in their cookie-cutter chapels, he has this one where if you were, say, preaching at the pulpit at the front, and you can see the basketball hoop in the cultural hall at the back, and this can
00;30;48;21 - 00;31;07;02
Mason Allred
be divided by like an accordion divider. But the fact that you have like a basketball hoop and where thesesacred ordinances of the sacrament or a sermon would be given to the pulpit together in this kind of same shared space is a great way to capture part of what he's talking about. So you see the theology sort of shaping some of the artistic production aesthetic.
00;31;07;02 - 00;31;11;02
Mason Allred
So that's one that I would mention. What do you think in this first section, Amanda?
00;31;11;04 - 00;31;39;00
Amanda Beardsley
Yeah, no thank you. I think Givens is always going to be kind of foundational, right. Like and so building off of People of Paradox. Right. Like his book, I don't know, very many like anyone who doesn't quote him in their text who is in Mormon studies. And so, yeah, I find that the collapse of the sacred and profane and his conversations surrounding, you know, like what
00;31;39;00 - 00;32;05;18
Amanda Beardsley
if there is kind of a technology, you know, like of art in Mormonism, are these the specific components? Right. And he's always been great in giving us a blueprint for what that might be. I think that, and I want to say too, like when we were thinking about these kind of categories to put some of these authors into, it was hard.
Colleen McDannell and Temple Art Diversity
00;32;05;18 - 00;32;35;07
Amanda Beardsley
So, for instance, like, we put, Colleen McDannel early on, because she gives a great foil and conversation to what Givens is saying in regards to art as theology through an institutional lens. She's looking specifically at temple art and how it shifts when there's more awareness around kind of the diversity of the church.
00;32;35;07 - 00;33;02;17
Amanda Beardsley
Right. And what the subject matter in those images end up changing to so, switching out images in the temple, likemain temple rooms to more contemplative, models of femininity or rather than masculinity and race and things like that.
00;33;02;17 - 00;33;30;19
Amanda Beardsley
So there's a really interesting kind of interplay between their two chapters in particular. But, yeah, I think, everything in that first one is it gives us more of a foundation for thinking through how does theology operate in relationship to kind of the art that's been made in the institution, not just in the temple, right.
00;33;30;19 - 00;34;10;07
Amanda Beardsley
But in something like a sacrament hall? In a church building. But then what's interesting, too, as I was thinking about your question, was that those chapters could also show up in the politics of space? The section that we have. And so I just kind of wanted to note that, but I can also comment on the second section that you talked about, which is image-making.
Nathan Rees and Ashlee Whitaker Evans on Community and Public Image
00;34;10;10 - 00;35;03;11
Amanda Beardsley
And so, I found a few chapters in that to be particularly compelling, but the one for me that stands out is Nathan Rees' “The Public Image.” And it's mostly because I think Rees does a really incredible job of interweaving how print culture, not just within kind of like Mormonism, as well as like monuments that create an image for the self and the community and in a way that isn't looking at high art with like a capital A, but looking at the media that is disseminated through like newspapers, and through anti-Mormon rhetoric.
00;35;03;13 - 00;35;42;25
Amanda Beardsley
And then also conceptions of the self, you know, and I think that public image narrative really jives well with Ashley Whittaker's chapter, on community, in early Mormonism and how portraiture worked to kind of do that. So I would love, I guess, in future use or and wondering how people could use the book now, like looking across kind of those chapters to see what's the argument being made in like Whitaker's chapter.
00;35;42;25 - 00;36;22;25
Amanda Beardsley
Right. And then what's the one being made in Rees’ chapter, and how do those relate to one another? And where maybe some of the continuities and some of the disjunctions occur, but yeah, I think, that one for me is very, very memorable and one that also reaches, outside of Mormon studies to kind of give a blueprint for what it means to just look at our daily media, our daily surroundings, to think about how those function too to create an identity for a place or for community.
00;36;22;28 - 00;36;47;00
Nicholas Shrum
Those are great examples. And I'll just comment briefly on why I think these are so important for people that might be listening to this podcast. The podcast has listeners that are academics, that are members of just lay congregations, that are interested in kind of how academics are thinking about Mormonism. And I'll just say these four in particular.
00;36;47;00 - 00;37;12;00
Nicholas Shrum
And I'm glad that you highlighted these. For one, the “Theology of Mormon Art” by Terryl Givens is fantastic, as you mentioned, Mason, about how it's able to point out that, like, as a practicing Latter-day Saint, like if somebody happens to be practicing Latter-day Saint, you have a theology of art and maybe you don't recognize that because we're not accustomed to thinking about having our own theologies.
00;37;12;00 - 00;37;34;03
Nicholas Shrum
But Givens’ piece makes you think like as just even a practicing member or somebody that's approximate to Mormonism, right? That we have ways of thinking about the divine and the mundane and that kind of thing. And then I love the McDannell chapter for academics as well
00;37;34;03 - 00;38;00;24
Nicholas Shrum
that may not be accustomed to thinking about that, maybe they have conceptions of Mormonism as solely institutional. And McDannell's piece absolutely speaks to that, but also shows that there's a lot of ambivalence and pushback between people that the church asks to to create art for these very sacred places. And there is a dynamic, there's an interplay between artists and the people that the church is trying to reach out to.
00;38;00;24 - 00;38;22;12
Nicholas Shrum
And so it's not just Mormon art, right? Back to our previous part of our conversation, Mormon art is not just what the institutional church says is Mormon art. It might have a function in something like a temple, but even then it has to adapt. It has to change based on those things. So I appreciate both of you bringing up those essays.
00;38;22;15 - 00;38;24;29
Nicholas Shrum
Mason, did you have something you wanted to add?
00;38;25;01 - 00;38;41;25
Mason Allred
Yeah, maybe. I'll finish up on the image making and take us into the next one, which is space. But, so she mentioned, Ashlee Whitaker Evans one on this. Portraits, landscapes, and panorama. The reason why I just want to follow up on that before we move on is because it's important what she's doing.
00;38;41;25 - 00;38;58;27
Mason Allred
So academically, thinking in terms of like communitas and this idea of of creating community with art, I thought was really interesting would be I think, really fruitful for readers to see how she does this. For me as wel,it's great because it does what we wanted the book to do, which is a sort of, revising of our understanding of history.
00;38;58;27 - 00;39;21;27
Mason Allred
She's challenged existing narratives. There's been this idea out there and I think some of this is their own fault of historians, but there's been this idea there's not much Mormon art in that 19th century, because they're too focused on just kind of surviving day-to-day. There's like trying to get a religion going and build this up and moving from state to state and dealing with, all this, what they would term is just like persecution, basically.
00;39;21;27 - 00;39;47;14
Mason Allred
Right? There's not time to foster any robust art movement. But if you look at Ashley’s chapter and the way they're using portraiture and landscape and panorama is actually quite complex, and there's a lot more stuff out there than maybe most people would have realized. So I like that idea that they're kind of painting themselves into a community, essentially, like they're painting the images of that community that they're actually trying to foster in the real world.
00;39;47;14 - 00;40;16;13
Mason Allred
So that's a beautiful way to think about image-making in the power of image-making for a community. The next section then we get into is around these ideas of space and politics of space. And we thought about it in both very physical, literal terms, but also more metaphorical aesthetic terms of space, like within a frame. And so I was thinking in this one, there's great chapters throughout here, I was thinking of Mary Campbell's one about photographs or even like, Josh Probert’ss one about the temple interiors and architecture.
Mary Campbell on Photographs
00;40;16;15 - 00;40;33;20
Mason Allred
So maybe I'll just jump on one of these and let Amanda take the other one. I'll speak to maybe Mary Campbell's. We both love this chapter. We're both fascinated by it. I think Amanda and I both appreciate the way it's written, like there's such a style to the way that Mary Campbell writes. But in this one, you got to think about what she's doing here.
00;40;33;20 - 00;41;03;10
Mason Allred
She focuses primarily, at least first, initially, on one single photograph. This “Big Ten” photograph of Brigham Young daughters. And that may sound like it's just too reductive for a chapter, but what she's able to do with that is to just push out into all these really interesting facets of that photograph and get into some really great primary sources that many people probably haven't seen before to really illustrate what's happening in the way that photograph is put together.
00;41;03;11 - 00;41;32;02
Mason Allred
In other words, what's the politics of space, of who makes it into that photograph and who doesn't? And we actually had to commission a graphic artist to make a graphic just to explain the complexity of the family relationships, the genealogy in that photograph. But then what Mary is able to argue here is that because of the scandalous nature of polygamy, that the way that Mormons are using photography, a medium, that it has this like veracity to, it captures what's in front of the camera.
00;41;32;02 - 00;41;49;13
Mason Allred
So it's “true.” They have this way of sort of concealing what's actually happening, a kind of mendacity, a kind of almost like a lying through the camera by never showing all the wives with the husbands, but focusing on like, daughters or just like what would look like a normal nuclear family in a small without this expansive wifery right around it.
00;41;49;15 - 00;42;02;10
Mason Allred
So it kind of shapes a practice of using photography as an aesthetic way of making photos that speaks to the cultural, even legal, issues at hand for these people with cameras. So it's just a really, really interesting chapter.
00;42;02;13 - 00;42;37;11
Amanda Beardsley
Yeah, I absolutely loved Mary's chapter. As a work of art history, a lot of times photography and close visual analysis, is not as prominent. And there's another chapter later in the book by Analisa Coats Sato, who also does about as deep of a dive as you can go in terms of visual analysis.
00;42;37;12 - 00;43;12;07
Amanda Beardsley
Analisa, is someone who uses this artist's work, just a single work, basically. I think in the full chapter, she maybe discusses like 4 or 5 works at most, but just uses one to kind of open up the doors for thinking through how something like BYU could help shape the identity of Mormon art in a very particular way, and also how performance itself
00;43;12;07 - 00;43;36;21
Amanda Beardsley
right, like in performance art as sort of as this, you know, in numerous senses, you can think of like Judith Butler. Right? In the highly academic way of performativity, to, you know, like just like performing a role in a play. And so, I think that's where Mary and Analisa work together.
Josh Probert on Temple Architecture
00;43;36;21 - 00;44;14;04
Amanda Beardsley
And so in a really interesting way as art historians, because both of them come from traditional art historical backgrounds. And then, with Josh, I think you had mentioned Josh, Mason. Josh's chapter is really fascinating to me because it tries to reconcile some of the early aspirations of Mormonism as this religion that, at least for Joseph Smith, was hoped to achieve some kind of opulence and how to grapple with that against some of the more Protestant-leaning kind of ideologies that come out later.
00;44;14;04 - 00;44;44;06
Amanda Beardsley
And I think the reason we wanted to put this in a chapter about spaces, I think there's a really interesting spatial politics at play in Josh's chapter specifically when he talks about the parlor, the temple parlor, and how that might relate to spaces of domesticity. And that being kind of its own interesting commentary on 19th century homes,
00;44;44;06 - 00;45;16;02
Amanda Beardsley
Like, if this is a house for the Lord, you know, like if this is where this is where God is supposed to reside, what does that look like? And how do we make that up spatially? And then how do we reconcile it with how scholars have looked at Mormonism as kind of this more of a Protestant aesthetic, this pared down, you know, against-the-image-and-ornamentation type of religion.
00;45;16;04 - 00;46;05;23
Amanda Beardsley
When, you know, Joseph Smith was very into the idea of it being extremely opulent. And so that was a history that was relatively new to me in Josh's chapter and I think that was great. And then the next section on institutions, we've sort of, kind of touched on, but some of the standouts for me, you know, we have, just different ways that Mormonism in particular has kind of shaped itself, whether it's throughLinda Jones Gibbs talking about missionary work outside of America and having missionaries learn how to paintlike the Europeans, so
00;46;05;23 - 00;46;29;22
Amanda Beardsley
that it can bring some kind of esteem and social stature. It made me think of the different ways of image-making that we were talking about earlier, too,in that you have this attempt to establish oneself and a community in the way that Ashley Whitaker's chapter does with portraiture.
00;46;29;22 - 00;47;00;14
Amanda Beardsley
I think of also Glen Nelson's chapter in thinking through, these specific artists. There's two chapters there that Glen does–one on how New York influenced LDS art. And Menachem Wecker’s
00;47;00;16 - 00;47;30;27
Amanda Beardsley
narration and a really, cool and humorous, I think, chapter about the Art and Belief movement, which happens later in the 20th century and talking about how, I don't know, something like a Trevor Southey like image is found in this closet, right? Like in this janitor's closet and trying to figure out, like, how did we get here?
00;47;30;27 - 00;47;53;09
Amanda Beardsley
And then I think the thing about Menachem's chapter that's fascinating is that, he's a journalist,and so he's working through kind of that lens and is giving interviews to everyone he could in the Art and Belief movement. So a lot of what he shares is this kind of oral history
00;47;53;11 - 00;48;23;25
Amanda Beardsley
that he's kind of, you know, retelling and connecting to the art of that moment and also the controversy of, I guess, the institutional push and pull of both wanting that to be part and I think this goes back to the earliest conversation in this podcast– wanting to define the art, but also not wanting to write like that kind of push and pull between the institutional acceptance and rejection of what can constitute the canon itself.
00;48;23;25 - 00;48;35;03
Amanda Beardsley
So, yeah, that one's a really fascinating kind of section to me for those reasons, because I think all of us authors touch on that in some form or another.
00;48;35;05 - 00;49;01;18
Nicholas Shrum
Excellent. I appreciate you pulling out some of those essays that are emblematic of these themes. I want to be considerate of your time, but I do want, if it'd be okay– you both have chapters in this collection, and they're wonderful chapters. I'm hoping that both of you can briefly just explain to listeners kind of what your essays are about.
00;49;01;18 - 00;49;13;02
Nicholas Shrum
And, before we kind of transition to some concluding thoughts about the book. Mason, can we talk about your essay first and then we can move to Amanda?
Mason Allred on Global Mormon Cinema
00;49;13;04 - 00;49;38;17
Mason Allred
Yeah, I'd be happy to. Thank you. So we ended up putting both of our in this section title “identity,” because we're both thinking about intersectionality. We're thinking about ways expressed in different artworks. So for my chapter, I was asked to focus on Mormon cinema, but I broke it up, thematically and chronologically with Randy Astle, who had a chapter on documentary film.
00;49;38;17 - 00;50;09;28
Mason Allred
So, he said, I'll focus on documentary film. He went like from the beginnings of cinema up to today. And I said, I'll take about 1970 to 2020, but focus more on feature films, narrative feature films. So in my chapter, what I did is I tried to direct our attention away from some of the more well-known Mormon films, especially from the Mormon Corridor kind of Utah, Idaho, Arizona, maybe even California, and tried to look out like what else has been out there, and how does it still speak back to Mormon tradition, ideas and stuff like that.
00;50;10;01 - 00;50;27;24
Mason Allred
And specifically, I was interested in looking at these films theoretically through the lens of like affect theory and embodiment. I'm really interested in this, in the way that the films, if they're made by Latter-day Saints, the ones that I looked at and at least to some degree, part of their audience are going to be fellow Latter-day Saints.
00;50;27;27 - 00;50;46;11
Mason Allred
I think they have to worry about what's going on with bodies on screen and for their audience, the way that the film might address or pull on the body of the audience. And this is why I think in a lot of Mormon cinema, you haven't seen too much until very recently done with horror. There's just not much that's like deliberately erotic.
00;50;46;13 - 00;51;13;15
Mason Allred
But there is quite a bit, that is sentimental, it's more of the kind of weepy tradition to try to get you to cry. That's okay. That's an okay bodily response in this tradition. So I was curious about the way that these different directors navigate the body in those ways. And so I turned my attention to these films in the beginning, from the early 1970s, one from Spain, The Dead, the Devil in the flesh, one from the Philippines, which was Weighed but Found Wanting.
00;51;13;17 - 00;51;37;19
Mason Allred
And then one from Norway as well, Love is War. And so these were all right there in the early 70s and they're all Latter-day Saint filmmakers who are drawing from their experience in this religious tradition, and it's showing up in the way they're making different movies. And so I just tried to analyze the way they're working with bodies on screen, and how that might address the bodies of the audience and how this might illustrate what I call a positive theology of embodiment.
00;51;37;23 - 00;51;53;29
Mason Allred
You have this belief that the body is somehow intrinsic to joy and truth and light, and that it's some form of it is going to be eternally with people when they resurrector Latter-day Saints. So how does that show up in the way that they're making movies and their anxieties around that and their joys around that?
00;51;53;29 - 00;52;09;11
Mason Allred
So things like dancing are really important to me. Things like engaging with media, they get you to feel stuff on screen is really important to me. Rhetoric from leaders of the church saying things like, you have to be so careful with the movies you watch or the music you listen to, to kind of sensitize and heighten that anxiety around
00;52;09;11 - 00;52;15;07
Mason Allred
media for Mormons is showing up in their films. And so that was kind of a focus of what I did.
00;52;15;09 - 00;52;18;29
Nicholas Shrum
Awesome. Thank you. Amanda, can you tell us about yours?
Amanda Beardsley on Mormon Feminist Art
00;52;19;02 - 00;52;57;05
Amanda Beardsley
Yeah. So, I was given the task of writing an entire history of Mormon feminist art in a single chapter. And I think there's several ways you could approach doing this. The first would be to–and this is, you know, what has happened historically with a lot of feminist histories, especially in the 1970s–recover and reclaim all of the women who contributed, in some form or another, to the field or, you know, like if you're thinking of like, STEM fields, you know, to like math or to astronomy.
00;52;57;07 - 00;53;27;04
Amanda Beardsley
And so, I wanted to sidestep doing that because while that's a very important feminist practice, I wanted to think about what are some of the systems that, like some of the patriarchal systems, that women are working against and with within Mormonism or just grappling with., And then, what are some of the counter strategies that women have used to kind of reclaim their space?
00;53;27;04 - 00;53;53;14
Amanda Beardsley
And so for me, when I started looking at a lot of the art and some of my favorite artists within Mormon art, I saw what I call like more of a genealogical kind of approach to feminism. But I think if we were to make Mormon feminist art exceptional, this is the thing that would maybe separate it from feminist art in some ways.
00;53;53;16 - 00;54;22;07
Amanda Beardsley
as we read it art historically through a contemporary lens or something like that. We know genealogy is such a huge part of how Mormons think about themselves and their relationship to the world. That's part of their cosmology. And so what does this look like, in a strategic way, through the lens of women's work and women's labor and women's gendered practices, basically.
00;54;22;07 - 00;55;02;07
Amanda Beardsley
Right. So I look at some of the crossovers with,for instance, a lot of feminist artists who reclaimed thecraftsince those were usually thought of within the realm of women. And so, you know, like sewing and needlework and things like that are usually considered kind of gendered labor and so if that's something that women in Mormonism are doing at the same time that, or around the same time that feminist artists are doing it, regularly, what makes it different.
00;55;02;07 - 00;55;27;22
Amanda Beardsley
And so for me, it would be like what Jenny Reeder talks about in her chapter is like hair art, right? But because it's taking up kind of a family genealogyand weaving that [genealogy] with family hair. Right. Like there's a different kind of tone, I think, in Mormonism
00;55;27;24 - 00;55;50;25
Amanda Beardsley
That is really significant and fascinating. And so figuring out like, what are some of these themes like .genealogy or Heavenly Mother, right? Or, thinking about the experience of pregnancy, you know, through the lens ofbeing a Mormon woman, who lives in Mexico.
00;55;50;25 - 00;56;23;06
Amanda Beardsley
Right. Like, I think all of those kind of stories, because they aren't usually told, and because they aren't given as much space in the archives of history, become really, really fascinating strategies of not only inserting yourself into those narratives, but making strange some of the systems that do prioritize male voices or white voices or, you know, whatever the default usually is.
00;56;23;09 - 00;56;28;16
Amanda Beardsley
And so, yeah, that's kind of a little bit about my chapter.
00;56;28;19 - 00;56;55;06
Mason Allred
Can I mention real quickly, in this section, what would have fit nicely too, because we have Paul Reeve on kind of whiteness as a default standard in aesthetics. And Carlyle Constantino think about Native American representation. But Nicholas, you've also written on John McNaughton and these ideas around like nationalism, whiteness, religion all mixed together in the artwork of someone like that would fit nicely in here had we seen that or known that five years ago.
00;56;55;11 - 00;57;08;25
Mason Allred
But that's the hope, is that seeing that in Journal of Mormon History would be a nice little outgrowth of this section here. I just want to mention that's a great article. And I see that kind of as a kindred spirit or a cousin to what was happening here in this section.
00;57;08;27 - 00;57;09;26
Amanda Beardsley
Yeah.
00;57;09;29 - 00;57;29;12
Nicholas Shrum
Well, thank you. I can't say enough good things about this book. And so that's I'm just really excited to have you on here to give listeners a taste of what's in here as listeners can tell, there are very few things that this collection does not touch on, right?
00;57;29;15 - 00;57;57;07
Nicholas Shrum
Gender and sexuality, race, embodiment, politics, institutions, education. Right? The list goes on and on and on of how all of these authors have been able to take these case studies and say so much more than one might expect when they just first hear something like Mormon art. So, major kudos to the both of you for your work and I love your individual articles.
The Book's Future in Mormon Studies
00;57;57;11 - 00;58;31;03
Nicholas Shrum
Those were two of my favorites. Really, I love interdisciplinary work, and these are both excellent examples of that. So thank you for that. We only have a couple of minutes left. We've already touched a little bit on how we can see or you've have seen, would like to see this being used. I'm curious if you have any thoughts about, or if any observations of how this has already been used, and how those that might go pick it up, they can, where they might encounter it or how they can supplement it, how maybe they can go about reading it.
00;58;31;05 - 00;58;48;09
Mason Allred
I mean, Amanda have you heard like, I don't know, actually, implementations of it yet, and especially because academic publishing still has this issue where it's always kind of delayed in response that has reviews but also use in the classroom. I don't have any great anecdotes right now of how it's being used. All I have is like hopes and imaginations.
00;58;48;09 - 00;59;17;22
Mason Allred
Still, even though it came out last fall. But I'm hoping this just kind of livens up a classroom with religious studies or with art or, like I said, with cultural studies, because although it could seem so specific to just the Mormon tradition, as you said, we tried to touch on so many different things that I want to see people using it, because it will flesh out a little bit more of what's happening in a very much like American experience, but then also beyond.
00;59;17;22 - 00;59;35;29
Mason Allred
In some ways, I'm hoping it does that. And then for those who are already kind of in Mormon studies, I'm hoping they see some of these chapters and it just gets ideas going where like they want to reread that artwork differently or makes them think about another project they're already working on differently. I definitely think it's going to do those sorts of things and we'll start to see more of that.
00;59;35;29 - 00;59;39;12
Mason Allred
I don't have the specific anecdotes right now, though.
00;59;39;15 - 01;00;03;09
Amanda Beardsley
Yeah. How I've seen it is mostly through the work of podcasters like yours, Nicholas, It's been nice for us to be able to talk about it a little bit more here and there and unpack it, because that is a lot to read. It's 22 chapters. And so, for me, another hope would be to see it in art history or visual arts kind of classrooms.
01;00;03;11 - 01;00;28;10
Amanda Beardsley
You know, we look at like Islamic art, we look at Catholic artand it's time to look at American religions, not just like Protestantism, but like, well, I think Mormonism is is very significantly enmeshed in American culture. Seeing it on syllabi, like that would be very exciting for me.
01;00;28;10 - 01;00;49;25
Nicholas Shrum
And so for those listeners that teach courses on Mormonism or American art, this is your opportunity to update your syllabi to reflect some of the most recent scholarship on visual art and religion. So, both of you, thank you so much. Any other thoughts before we conclude.
01;00;49;28 - 01;01;04;07
Mason Allred
I just want to say a big thank you for your care and attention to the book and the way you think of it in the way you treat it. I didn't even think about that myself, that you don't normally bring on someone to talk about an edited collection, like an anthology, kind of a thing like this, since it is normally a monograph. So I really appreciate you
01;01;04;07 - 01;01;21;18
Mason Allred
I hope recognizing the monumental nature of this project we worked really hard on and we are proud of. It's not perfect at all. There's definitely some some holes here and stuff that we hope people fill in, but, I think it's really great and we're excited to have it out there and we can't wait to see what people do with it and what it inspires down the road.
01;01;21;21 - 01;01;41;19
Amanda Beardsley
Yeah, I can only echo what Mason says. We are so appreciative of the attention that it's been given and the careful questions that you've asked about the content. That allow us to kind of highlight some of the biggest strengths of it. And it is very exciting. It's a as far as our texts coming out.
01;01;41;21 - 01;01;47;06
Amanda Beardsley
And so thank you so much, Nicholas, for your attention and for your thoughtfulness.
Conclusion
01;01;47;06 - 01;02;13;27
Nicholas Shrum
Of course, well, thank you so much to, again, Amanda Beardsley and Mason Allred, editors of Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader, published in 2024 with Oxford University Press. Thank you both so much. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scholars and Saints. Please be sure to come back to hear more conversation soon. A special thank you to Harrison Stewart for production editing, and to Ben Arrington for providing music for this episode.
01;02;14;00 - 01;02;18;25
Nicholas Shrum
To hear more, visit Mormon guitar.com. Thank you for listening.