Helen Whitney's film, The Mormons , a coproduction with the American Experience Frontline series, aired over PBS on April 30 and May 1. The film explores the history and current realities of the Mormon religion. It's possible to watch the entire 240 minute documentary online. PBS has a well-constructed website with good information about the history and various topics of Mormon culture. The Readings and Links page provides further information about Mormon history and religion, politics, Mormon dissent, and genealogy.This is all useful and illuminating, but what if you're doing serious academic research about Mormon history and culture?
You might begin by reading a recent bibliographic essay on the state of Mormon studies. Here are a few possibilities (links to journal articles will work on Calvin's campus, but are not available to the general public unless you can proxy in through a library site):
"Jan Shipps and the Mainstreaming of Mormon Studies," by Philip Barlow. Church History 73:2 (June 2004): 412-426.
Shipps has been described as "the Jane Goodall of Mormon studies." In this review essay of her book Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years among the Mormons (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2000) [HL BX8611 .S493 2000], Barlow describes how Shipps, a Mormon outsider, helped "shape, shepherd, and broker the field of Mormon studies." In addition to reviewing Shipps' book, Barlow's essay is a good summary of current issues in Mormon studies, with bibliographic pointers to good current scholarship.Excavating Mormon Pasts: The New Historiography of the Last Half Century, ed. Newell G. Bringhurst and Lavina Fielding Anderson (Salt Lake City: Kofford Books, 2004) [Hekman Library BX8611 .E93 2004].
This book contains 16 bibliographic essays covering different periods of Mormon history and topics of interest, including Mormon women's history, polygamy, and the internationalization of Mormonism. See a review of this book in Church History 75:1 Mar 2006):216-219.
For a well-written popular and fairly rigorously researched book, take a look at Mormon America: The Power and the Promise, by Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling (Harper, 1999) [HL BX8635.2 .O88 1999]. Harper plans to issue a new edition of this book in October.The standard bibliography of Mormon history is an exhaustive (and exhausting) compilation of more than 16,000 items: Studies in Mormon History, 1830-1997: An Indexed Bibliography, ed. James B. Allen, Ronald W. Walker, and David J. Whittaker (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2000) [HL TheoRef Z7845 .M8 A44 2000]. There's also an online update for post-1997 bibliography.
For popular culture fans, take a look at the Wikipedia article "Portrayals of Mormons in the Popular Media," a survey ranging from Arthur Conan Doyle's novels to the TV program "Big Love" and the notorious Episode 712 of South Park, "All About the Mormons?" (recently removed from YouTube by Viacom).
