Call for Applicants: The Fifth Annual Summer Seminar on Mormon Theology

“Are We Not All Beggars? Reading Mosiah 4”
Cittadella Ospitalità, Assisi, Italy
June 17–June 30, 2018

Sponsored by the Mormon Theology Seminar
in partnership with
The Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies,
The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship,
and the Wheatley Institution

In the summer of 2018, the Mormon Theology Seminar, in partnership with the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute at Brigham Young University, and the Wheatley Institution at Brigham Young University, will sponsor a summer seminar for graduate students and faculty devoted to reading Mosiah 4.

The seminar will be hosted by the Cittadella Ospitalità in Assisi, Italy, from June 17 through June 30, 2018. Travel arrangements, housing, and a $1,000 stipend will be provided for admitted participants. The seminar will be led by Adam Miller and Joseph Spencer, directors of the Mormon Theology Seminar.

ABOUT THE SEMINAR

This fifth annual summer seminar will again adapt the Mormon Theology Seminar’s practice of facilitating intense, exploratory, interdisciplinary, and collaborative readings of Mormon scripture for a live two-week format. During the first week, the seminar will meet daily to work word-by-word through the text of Mosiah 4:4-25 from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (philosophical, historical, literary, anthropological, rhetorical, political, archeological, sociological, etc.) in order to promote theologically rich readings of the text. The second week will workshop conference papers and a joint-report based on the previous week’s collaboration and will culminate in a one-day conference, open to the public, on June 30, 2018. The conference proceedings will then be gathered and edited for publication.

HOW TO APPLY

The seminar welcomes applications from a wide variety of academic disciplines, cultural backgrounds, and geographic locations. Graduate students, junior faculty, and scholars based outside the U.S. are especially encouraged to apply, though applications from senior and independent scholars are also welcome.

Application materials should include (1) a full curriculum vitae, (2) a 200-word statement regarding the applicant’s interest in the seminar, and (3) a 500–750 word essay that demonstrates the applicant’s ability to offer a close, creative, and theologically substantial reading of Mosiah 4:13.

Applications should be submitted by December 22, 2017. Notifications will be sent by January 22, 2018.

Questions and application materials should be directed to [email protected].

For more information about the Mormon Theology Seminar, visit mormontheologyseminar.org.