Out of Obscurity

Patrick Q. Mason is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and Associate Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate University.John G. Turner is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University.

• Contributor biographies IntroductionPatrick Q. Mason Part I. Internationalization1. International Legal Experience and the Mormon Theology of the State, 1945-2012Nathan Oman2. The Internationalization of Mormonism: Indications from IndiaTaunalyn Rutherford Part II. Political Culture3. Ezra Taft Benson and Modern (Book of) Mormon ConservatismPatrick Q. Mason4. The Romney Lens: A Bifocal Approach to Mormonism, American Religion, and Politics in the Past Half-CenturyJ. B. Haws5. "The Puritan Ethic on High": LDS Media and the Mormon Embrace of Free Enterprise in the 20th CenturyJames Dennis LoRusso6. The Pageantry of Protest in Temple SquareMax Perry Mueller7. Mormons and Same-Sex Marriage: From ERA to Prop 8Neil J. Young Part III. Gender8. Mahana, You Naked! Modesty, Sexuality, and Race in the Mormon PacificAmanda Hendrix-Komoto9. Mormons and Housework during Second Wave FeminismKate Holbrook10. Saying Goodbye to the Final Say: The Softening and Reimagining of Mormon Male Headship IdeologiesCaroline Kline11. Blogging the Boundaries: Mormon Mommy Blogs and the Construction of Mormon IdentityKristine Haglund Part IV. Religious Culture12. The Evangelical Countercult Movement and Mormon Conservatism Matthew Bowman13. Holding on to the "Chosen Generation": The Mormon Battle for Youth in the Late 1960s and Early 1970sRebecca de Schweinitz14. Everyone Can Be a Pioneer: The Sesquicentennial Celebrations of Mormon Arrival in the Salt Lake ValleySara M. Patterson15. "All the truth does not always need to be told": The LDS Church, Mormon History, and Religious AuthorityJohn G. Turner Index

This book is a great example of a text that is suitable for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students wishing to expand their knowledge of Mormon history, as most chapters assume more than a basic knowledge of the subject. Individual chapters could easily be assigned for both undergraduate and graduate classes. The book's chapters are relatively short in length, around twenty pages or so each, and this allows one to dip in and out of the text. The inclusion of chapters by established academics in the field, as well students in the last stages of their doctoral work at the time of publication, helps demonstrate a plurality of voices and is an excellent example of the editors' efforts to support junior scholars.