Mike Quinn

[_Blixa]

So, the greatest Mormon historian ever has published one book at an academic publisher? And that one is on homosexuality, not specifically Mormonism?

Dale Morgan, Juanita Brooks, Thomas Alexander, Leonard Arrington, Orson F. Whitney -- move over. Anti-Mormons think you are dolts, even though you are heavily published.

Bob stop talking nonsense.

[_rcrocket]

So, the greatest Mormon historian ever has published one book at an academic publisher? And that one is on homosexuality, not specifically Mormonism?

Dale Morgan, Juanita Brooks, Thomas Alexander, Leonard Arrington, Orson F. Whitney -- move over. Anti-Mormons think you are dolts, even though you are heavily published.

Bob stop talking nonsense.

Sorry. I may not be an academic, but I hire them. I know the difference between one published at academic houses and one not. Aside from his book on homosexuals (which is not Mormon history), Quinn is published either at church-sanctioned presses or the uber-vanity press known as Signature Books. I'd say, therefore, that if I were out looking to hire somebody to teach at my respectable university, Quinn just ain't gonna qualify -- the very point the Wall Street Journal made.

But, go ahead and publish your work at a vanity press. I'll be impressed.

rcrocket

[_rcrocket]

Same Sex Dynamics, published in 1996 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Here are a few more:

He's published essays in Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past (Norton, 1992), Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education (University of Chicago Press, 1993), New Encyclopedia of the American West (Yale University Press, 1998), and American National Biography (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

U. of Chicago? Yale? Oxford? Never heard of any of these places.

Essays are not real academic pieces, but I need to see these before concluding that they are merely transcripts of speeches given at dinners. Which one of these deal with Mormon History? After all, you've (Rollo) cited them to me as support for the claim that Quinn is the greatest Mormon historian ever.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Essays are not real academic pieces ....

You're just digging the hole deeper.

After all, you've (Rollo) cited them to me as support for the claim that Quinn is the greatest Mormon historian ever.

You started by asking for just one, and I gave you the U. of Illinois Press for Same Sex Dynamics, which was very much about Mormonism. I offered the other publications to show Quinn has often been published by non-LDS presses. Whine all you want, Bob, but I gotcha this time.

[_rcrocket]

Essays are not real academic pieces ....

You're just digging the hole deeper.

After all, you've (Rollo) cited them to me as support for the claim that Quinn is the greatest Mormon historian ever.

You started by asking for just one, and I gave you the U. of Illinois Press for Same Sex Dynamics, which was very much about Mormonism. I offered the other publications to show Quinn has often been published by non-LDS presses. Whine all you want, Bob, but I gotcha this time.

Chest beating does not mean victory.

I may not be entirely familiar with all of Quinn's books, but as far as I can tell he has never published at any academic publisher (except BYU) on any Mormon topic. He may indeed being a national expert on buggery, but he doesn't meet the usual qualifications as a historian if he hasn't published in academic journals.

The essays you cite, I don't know. Which ones are Mormon topics?

[_Mister Scratch]

Sorry. I may not be an academic, but I hire them. I know the difference between one published at academic houses and one not. Aside from his book on homosexuals (which is not Mormon history), Quinn is published either at church-sanctioned presses or the uber-vanity press known as Signature Books. I'd say, therefore, that if I were out looking to hire somebody to teach at my respectable university, Quinn just ain't gonna qualify -- the very point the Wall Street Journal made.

No; the Journal article made it abundantly clear that Quinn had been screwed out of a Mormon Studies position by anti-Quinn TBMs. Likewise, DCP and Co. prevented Quinn from delivering a paper at that now-infamous Yale conference. Further, Quinn's Same-Sex Dynamics is absolutely an examination of Mormon history---namely, the history of attitudes pertaining to homosexuality within Mormon culture. (It seems you have a rather narrow understanding of what constitutes "history" in academe.) In the end, it's not even really clear just what you're quibbling with: Do you question his scholarship, and claim that it is "dishonest," as DCP and Bill Hamblin do? Or are you questioning the label of "historian," or what? Or are you merely harping on credentials, claiming (bizarrely) that books are somehow a better determinant of scholarship than essays?

[_The Nehor]

No; the Journal article made it abundantly clear that Quinn had been screwed out of a Mormon Studies position by anti-Quinn TBMs.

I presume then that this screwing was angry sex?

[_rcrocket]

Sorry. I may not be an academic, but I hire them. I know the difference between one published at academic houses and one not. Aside from his book on homosexuals (which is not Mormon history), Quinn is published either at church-sanctioned presses or the uber-vanity press known as Signature Books. I'd say, therefore, that if I were out looking to hire somebody to teach at my respectable university, Quinn just ain't gonna qualify -- the very point the Wall Street Journal made.

No; the Journal article made it abundantly clear that Quinn had been screwed out of a Mormon Studies position by anti-Quinn TBMs. Likewise, DCP and Co. prevented Quinn from delivering a paper at that now-infamous Yale conference. Further, Quinn's Same-Sex Dynamics is absolutely an examination of Mormon history---namely, the history of attitudes pertaining to homosexuality within Mormon culture. (It seems you have a rather narrow understanding of what constitutes "history" in academe.) In the end, it's not even really clear just what you're quibbling with: Do you question his scholarship, and claim that it is "dishonest," as DCP and Bill Hamblin do? Or are you questioning the label of "historian," or what? Or are you merely harping on credentials, claiming (bizarrely) that books are somehow a better determinant of scholarship than essays?

Well, to be honest, I don't have Same Sex Dynamics but I read a heavily-edited chapter from the book in Dialogue. Based upon reviews I've read, it is not a book on Mormonism, but it has a chapter on Mormon buggery. The book qualifies him for expertise in what is known as queer studies, but not Mormonism.

A professor of English at NAU characterizes the work as: a richly impressionistic survey of American culture. It presents numerous cases, incidents and characters--some banal, some heartrending and some revolting--which provide a fascinating picture of varieties of social interchange common in the last century. I don't dispute that the entire work has an emphasis on Mormonism, but this is not Mormon history.

As far as the charge exists that LDS scholars have blackballed the poor boy, I would say that he certainly built the bedframe, made the mattress and the bed before lying down in it. Almost no peer-reviewing of his published works. One must wonder why he chose to publish his mangum opi at Signature.


There is no doubt that Quinn is a Mormon historian. But, only a minor unpublished one.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

I may not be entirely familiar with all of Quinn's books, but as far as I can tell he has never published at any academic publisher (except BYU) on any Mormon topic. He may indeed being a national expert on buggery, but he doesn't meet the usual qualifications as a historian if he hasn't published in academic journals.

The essays you cite, I don't know. Which ones are Mormon topics?

Here ya go:

1. "Religion in the American West," in Under An Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past, ed. William J. Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1992), 145-66.

2. "Plural Marriage and Mormon Fundamentalism," in Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 240-93.

3. "Thomas Hart Benton," Edmunds Acts," "J. Golden Kimball," "Latter Day Saints, Reorganized," "Mormon Manifesto," "Mountain Meadows Massacre," "Polygamy," "Salt Lake City, Utah," and "Joseph Smith, Jr.," in New Encyclopedia of the American West, ed. Howard R. Lamar (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 92-93, 331, 595, 626-27, 737, 743-44, 895-96, 1003-05, 1058-60.

4. "John C. Bennett," "Spencer W. Kimball," and "Emmeline B. Wells," in American National Biography, 24 vols., ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 2: 590-92, 12: 680-82, 23: 19-20.

5. "Magic, Folk" "Mormons (Latter-day Saints)," and "Smith, Joseph, Jr." in Encyclopedia of New York State, ed. Peter Eisenstadt (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 943-44, 1010-12, 1426-27.

6. As already stated, his Same Sex Dynamics book published by the U. of Illinois Press.

Yep, that Quinn sure is a slacker ....

[_Blixa]

Essays are not real academic pieces...

That's going to come as quite a surprise to the vast majority of academics as well as pretty much everyone on the roster of Great Thinkers of World Culture. I'll alert everyone I know. I'm sure Michel de Montaigne will be devastated you won't be hiring him as an adjunct at Bob Crocket U. Perhaps you could make it up to him by doing his temple work...