Awards for Best Biographies in 2005
USU’s Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, which describes itself as “a humanities outreach center in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences,” has just announced the 2005 winners of its Evans Biography Award and Handcart Award.
The Evans Biography Award, established in 1983, “recognizes outstanding research and writing of a biography of a person who lived in or had significant influence on the Mormon West or who was part of Mormonism’s pre-Utah history.” It carries a $10,000 prize. The Handcart Award, established in 1996 and carrying a $1000 prize, “is given each year to a biography of merit, often by an author who is not an academic historian, who contributes to an understanding of the Mormon-settled West.”
And the Evans Award goes (went) to….
Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling. The jury commented: “Bushman provides a service to historians and scholars … showing in detail the genesis and development of Mormon doctrines, rituals and church organization in the context of their times and in Joseph Smith’s career. … It is an important book and the best kind of biography in that it will spur additional debate and study because of the richness of detail.”
Bushman’s Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (1984) shared the 1984 Evans award with Linda King Newell and Val Avery’s Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith.
And the Handcart Award goes (went) to…
Gregory A. Prince and William Robert Wright, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism.
The official awards announcement can be seen here.
Up next on the awards circuit are the Mormon History Association awards, the winners of which will be announced at the association’s annual conference in late May. Authors will be competing for several awards, including the MHA Best Book Award, the Smith-Pettit Best First Book Award, the Steven F. Christensen Award for Best Documentary/Bibliography, the Ella Larsen Turner-Ella Ruth Turner Bergera Award for Best Biography, the J. Talmage Jones Awards of Excellence (“[a]warded for the two outstanding published articles on Mormon history”), and the T. Edgar Lyon Award for Best Article of the Year. Past winners are listed here (two books, Mormon Murders and Lion of the Lord, have won worst book awards from the MHA).Â
It seems like biography has really become the standard vehicle for books on LDS history, and what a year for LDS biography. But there are a limited number of subjects in LDS history — I wonder where the next wave of LDS biographers are going to turn for new subjects or new approaches.
Comment by Dave — April 17, 2006 @ 2:04 pm
Almost unfortunately so, Dave. I’d really like to see some people turn more to overarching themes, especially in light of academic discoveries in economics, anthropology or so forth.
I think in some ways biography is a kind of cheap way out because you focus on the character in the midst of events rather than the events themselves. There were some moves in that direction in the 90′s and then, at least to my eyes, very little became of it.
Comment by Clark Goble — April 17, 2006 @ 3:24 pm
I expect more in the way of interdisciplinary studies, but I think we are lacking for adequate biographies on multiple elite figures, including Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith, Heber J. Grant, George Albert Smith, Joseph Fielding Smith, Ezra Taft Benson, Howard W. Hunter, Amy Brown Lyman, George A. Smith, Eliza R. Snow, Zina Huntington, Susa Young Gates, Oliver Cowdery, Bathsheba Smith, James Talmage, N. Eldon Tanner, Belle Spafford, David Whitmer, Martin Harris, Reed Smoot, Bruce R. McConkie, Clarissa S. Williams, Louise Y. Robison, Barbara Smith, and Parley Pratt.
Comment by Justin Butterfield — April 17, 2006 @ 5:27 pm
Kenney was working on a biography of Joseph F. Smith. Did he drop that project? If so, I sure hope Flake picks it up.
Comment by J. Stapley — April 17, 2006 @ 6:06 pm
I didn’t know that Kenney was still working on that project. I hear he’s working on the Joseph Smith biography due out in a few years.
I should say that my list of biographical subjects did not make note of the fact that in some cases, scholars are currently working on biographies (e.g., Eliza Snow and Heber J. Grant).
Women and twentieth-century figures have been neglected topics in Mormon studies. A survey history of women in Mormonism does not exist. Scholars could write more social and cultural history on subjects such as the lives of LDS missionaries, on the lives of LDS youth and children, on LDS singles, on the lives of members from various ethnic and racial backgrounds, on life within Mormon wards and stakes (esp. in places outside the U.S.), on life in a modern majority-LDS community.
Comment by Justin — April 17, 2006 @ 11:11 pm
I agree whole heartedly Justin’s comments. Its commonplace to lionize the leadership class in any culture or society. Some historians call this phenomena “the great man theory of history.” That the ony important thing that need be written about and taught are what those at the top did. So we end up mythologizing the greatness of such leaders without really understanding the social forces that influence their positions and decisions. So we accept that Lincoln freed the slaves and that Martin Luther King ended racism all by himself. Or that Roosevelt ended the Great Depression. Or that Heber Kimball was solely responsible for ending the Blacks and the priesthood ban.
For those that think only biographies about the important and the known will sell or be received need ony look to the renowned besteller, “A Peoples History of the United States” by Howard Zinn to see that alternative accounts of history have value and merit in society.
Comment by David — April 17, 2006 @ 11:41 pm
*Spencer Kimball? Though Heber would have been quite dramatic. I agree on the dearth (sp?) of scholarship on twentieth-century figures and women in Mormon history–I’m presenting a paper at MHA on Joseph F. Merrill, but it only provides a skim outline of his life and focuses on his work with President Hinckley. But this is the man that initiated released-time seminary, was Church Comissioner of Education during the opening years of the Depression (and thus oversaw the Church’s divestment of several junior colleges), and vigorously campaigned for the continuation of Prohibtion (along with the Church’s use of mass media.) Yet, no published biography exists, and he gets the briefest mentions in the available histories. L. Tom Perry Special Collections has tons of 20th century Church history, countless papers and books just waiting to be written. Of course, after this paper I’m not pursuing Mormon studies . . .
Comment by a random cougar — April 24, 2006 @ 12:11 am
You’re right, Merrill lived a full and fascinating life, and there’s almost nothing on him in the literature. Your contribution is a welcome step.
Comment by Justin — April 24, 2006 @ 10:31 am