DonBradley wrote:If one looks at the output of scholarly work from Signature Books, including standard reference works on Mormonism held by the academic libraries, one would find that it is "a powerhouse in its own realm of scholars interested in Mormon history."
Don
Oh sure. Continue to think that. Signature Books, a peer-reviewed academic publisher. It is merely a counterpart to FARMS publications.
harmony wrote: You didn't say "powerhouse in its own realm of scholars interested in western US history". You said "academic powerhouses". Heck, even BYU is an academic powerhouse in its own realm of scholars interested in... something (engineering? computers? law? certainly not agriculture, but we can't all be perfect). I don't think USU qualifies as an "academic powerhouse" like Stanford, which is bonafide powerhouse.
Try to lose the hyperbole. Someone here will always call you on it.
Dr. Quinn hasn't even published any book at any university on any Mormon or Western American History subject outside of BYU.
Also, who has revealed to the world more heretofore forgotten aspects of Mormon history than Quinn?
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
harmony wrote: You didn't say "powerhouse in its own realm of scholars interested in western US history". You said "academic powerhouses". Heck, even BYU is an academic powerhouse in its own realm of scholars interested in... something (engineering? computers? law? certainly not agriculture, but we can't all be perfect). I don't think USU qualifies as an "academic powerhouse" like Stanford, which is bonafide powerhouse.
Try to lose the hyperbole. Someone here will always call you on it.
Dr. Quinn hasn't even published any book at any university on any Mormon or Western American History subject outside of BYU.
Doesn't BYU qualify?
I'm not sure why he keeps excluding BYU. Maybe because they aren't an academic powerhouse like Utah State. *forcibly pulling my tongue from my cheek*
harmony wrote: You didn't say "powerhouse in its own realm of scholars interested in western US history". You said "academic powerhouses". Heck, even BYU is an academic powerhouse in its own realm of scholars interested in... something (engineering? computers? law? certainly not agriculture, but we can't all be perfect). I don't think USU qualifies as an "academic powerhouse" like Stanford, which is bonafide powerhouse.
Try to lose the hyperbole. Someone here will always call you on it.
Dr. Quinn hasn't even published any book at any university on any Mormon or Western American History subject outside of BYU.
Doesn't BYU qualify?
I'm not sure why he keeps excluding BYU. Maybe because they aren't an academic powerhouse like Utah State. *forcibly pulling my tongue from my cheek*
I'll tell you, again, why I exclude BYU if you'll tell me what you think of the Bigler series and Great Basin Kingdom, published by USU.
harmony wrote: You didn't say "powerhouse in its own realm of scholars interested in western US history". You said "academic powerhouses". Heck, even BYU is an academic powerhouse in its own realm of scholars interested in... something (engineering? computers? law? certainly not agriculture, but we can't all be perfect). I don't think USU qualifies as an "academic powerhouse" like Stanford, which is bonafide powerhouse.
Try to lose the hyperbole. Someone here will always call you on it.
Dr. Quinn hasn't even published any book at any university on any Mormon or Western American History subject outside of BYU.
Doesn't BYU qualify?
I'm not sure why he keeps excluding BYU. Maybe because they aren't an academic powerhouse like Utah State. *forcibly pulling my tongue from my cheek*
I'll tell you, again, why I exclude BYU if you'll tell me what you think of the Bigler series and Great Basin Kingdom, published by USU.
I asked first and I was not the one that questioned USU's academic status.
Does anyone really need to ask Bob why he excludes BYU, or uses any of his other convoluted rhetorical ploys? And do you think he'd give the real reason anyway?
Bob practices a particularly opportunistic form of polemics, latching on to anything he finds useful, whether or not it makes sense, even to him. Truth and falsehood are equally useful for his purposes.
Its apropos here to revisit a short vignette that occurred some 25 years ago, in which Anthony Hutchinson and myself had a run in at our "mini-BYU Education Week" at the Columbia, Maryland Stake. This was about 1985. Hutchinson had given a talk earlier in the day claiming the miracles of Jesus were myths and stories attached to Jesus' ministry by his Apostles, and was the "talk of the town" in the building. Later, he gave a talk on the Salamander letter. In direct response to my question, he said that "scholars" (I assume this means a clear majority of those, in the Church or outside of it, who had examined the document), were "99%" certain of its authenticity.
Its interesting that the Salamander Letter flummoxed more of the infamous dissident heroes of the Signature Books pantheon than just Hutchinson. Its a good thing for Quinn that the fraud was exposed before publication, had it come at a later date, the clear implication, that the disciplines of textual criticism and historical reconstruction are fraught with what can be substantial problems of bias, interpretive misperception, sloppy analysis (not one of the September Six or others of similar bent ever, it seems, thought of legitimizing the document through empirical forensic testing, preferring scholarly analysis and model building to empirical verification), and can be flagrantly wrong, and that lofty tones of certainty can, indeed, mask personal agendas and inferential weakness, would have been much more ubiquitous.
Mr. Metcalf, Mr. Graham, and others will eventually confront the same egg, that covered the faces of Hutchinson and Quinn regarding the Salamander Letter, in regards to the Book of Abraham.
Its all a matter of time.
Last edited by Dr. Sunstoned on Tue Jan 15, 2008 7:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance.
Does anyone really need to ask Bob why he excludes BYU, or uses any of his other convoluted rhetorical ploys? And do you think he'd give the real reason anyway?
Bob practices a particularly opportunistic form of polemics, latching on to anything he finds useful, whether or not it makes sense, even to him. Truth and falsehood are equally useful for his purposes.
Now, this slanderous verbal excrement aside, can you add something of intellectual substance to the thread?
The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance.
You asked about BYU as a publisher of Dr. Quinn's works. I have omitted works wherein he was merely a contributing essayist
1. Quinn, D. Michael. J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years. Provo (BYU Press), 1983
2. Quinn, D. Michael. Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, Revised and Enlarged Edition. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998 (originally published -- 1987).
3. Quinn, D. Michael. The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994.
4. Quinn, D. Michael. Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example. University of Illinois Press, 1996.
5. Quinn, D. Michael. The Mormon Hierachy: Extensions of Power. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997.
6. Quinn, D. Michael. Elder Statesman: A Biography of J. Reuben Clark. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002.
Dr. Quinn published one book -- his first -- at BYU. He published no other books at BYU. It was a short book which dealt with a relatively short period of time in the twentieth century, and concentrated on J. Reuben Clark. In large part, Dr. Quinn merely built upon the work of Frank W. Fox, who published Fox, Frank W., J. Reuben Clark: The Public Years, BYU 1980. He used many of the same resources and persons Fox used. Dr. Quinn worked on the Fox book, as did one of my former partners. The book is well-written, but it is by no means a history of Mormonism. Rather, it is largely hagiography of the sort one often sees at BYU.
Dr. Quinn's next book was five years later. By this time he had become quite controversial and he was doing nothing to discourage the rumor I heard as a kid, a college student, that he was homosexual. Don Bradley discusses his also hearing the rumor, but my knowledge of Quinn was quite earlier. Whereas I don't care one way or the other whether an author is homosexual or not, it would seem that if such rumors were falling to the level of a college student, Quinn would have been in conflict with BYU by the 1980s. His Early Mormonism and Magic World View book had been prepared for publication before the Salamander fraud was exposed, and he was forced to rewrite his work which initially had been written around the Salamander letter.
When Quinn's 1987 work was published by Signature Books, his fate was really sealed in terms of Mormon objectivity. Marvin Hill was very critical of this work in a Sunstone review in 1995, as not objective and as critically dark.
Thereafter, the only book Quinn published at an academic publisher was Same Sex Dynamics, but it is often a vanity publisher. It publishes if one has the money and pays for the publication. It likely discloses such fact on its flyleaf. Ronald Walker published Wayward Saints at the University of Illinois that way.
So, that explains why I minimize his work at BYU Press, and minimize his professional output in general. Do I respect him? Yes. Do I cite him? Yes. But I don't hero-worship him like Don Bradley does. And as most of you do.