Matthew Bowman
Biographic Data
| ID | 3676104 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Bowman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Bowman |
| SIGNATURE | BOWMAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Essex |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2680-3322 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith
As revealed in Stephen Taysom's new and magisterial biography Joseph F. Smith, son of the assassinated Hyrum Smith and the British convert to Mormonism Mary Fielding, lived a life suspended in the space between his parents. His father, of course, sat at the right hand of his brother Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, participated in the religion's highest councils, and was its presiding patriarch upon his death in 1844. His mother was a Brit…
Why Joseph Fielding Smith Rejected Space Flight: Anti-modernism and the Problem of Civilization
Joseph Fielding Smith served as an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for sixty years and its president for two. He published some three dozen books. He stands as perhaps its most influential twentieth-century intellectual. But despite that reputation, one of the more famous stories about his life has its roots in an April 1962 visit to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he said that human beings would never land on the moon. The Unite…
The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America
Looking for Global Mormonism
Global Mormon studies is an emerging frontier in the field of Mormon studies. The last decade has seen a marked increase in attention to global manifestations of Mormonism as scholars work to decenter the North American LDS Church in their analyses. This shift away from the North American church is a necessary intervention in the field of Mormon studies as the vast majority of work in the field has focused on the institutional church, its North A…
Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse
In the 1980s and 1990s, inspired by the work of scholars like David D. Hall, Robert Orsi, and Karen McCarthy Brown, students of American religion began to drift away from the study of formal theology and toward what they called “lived religion.” Best understanding of the impact of religious belief on the lives of believers required not analysis of texts scholars and leaders might produce, but rather how those ideas manifested in the behavior, pra…
The Reed Smoot Hearings: The Investigation of a Mormon Senator and the Transformation of an American Religion. Edited by Michael Harold Paulos and Konden Smith Hansen. The Saints and the State: The Mo…
Journal Article The Reed Smoot Hearings: The Investigation of a Mormon Senator and the Transformation of an American Religion. Edited by Michael Harold Paulos and Konden Smith Hansen. The Saints and the State: The Mormon Troubles in Illinois. By James Simeone Get access The Reed Smoot Hearings: The Investigation of a Mormon Senator and the Transformation of an American Religion. Edited by Michael Harold Paulos Konden Smith Hansen. Logan: Utah Sta…
Confidence amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O. McKay, 1951–1970
Book Review| January 01 2020 Confidence amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O. McKay, 1951–1970 Harvard Heath, ed. Confidence amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O. McKay, 1951–1970. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2018. Matthew Bowman Matthew Bowman Reviewed by Matthew Bowman is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University, where he serves as associate professor of history and religion.…
The Work of Art Criticism: Collaboration, Communication, Community
This essay aims to reconsider the practice of art criticism. The first part aims to clear away some misconceptions that reduce art criticism to a fundamentally negative discourse that asserts a theory/practice distinction. In the second part, the essay tries to think of art criticism as collaborative writing alongside rather than about an artist. The third part, however, highlights some problems insofar as communication and collaboration have bec…
The Birth and Life of the New Mormon History
Review Article| July 29 2020 The Birth and Life of the New Mormon History The Selected Letters of Juanita Brooks, edited by Craig S. Smith. University of Utah Press, 2019. 505 pages. $45.00 cloth; ebook available.Confessions of a Mormon Historian: The Diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971–1997, edited by Gary James Bergera. Signature Books, 2018. 3 vols., 2500 pages. $150.00 cloth.Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, by Richard Lyman Bushman. Knopf…
The Experience of Formalism
Violence and Atheism in the Age of Abolition
This essay offers an interpretation of certain sections of the American abolitionist movement before the Civil War. It posits that many antebellum opponents of slavery and enslaved people alike subscribed to a theory of Christianity that, following Scottish common-sense theology and the experiential, liberation-oriented Christianity of the enslaved, maintained that morality and immorality were equally comprehensible and perceivable to all humanit…
Indiscernibly Bad: The Problem of Bad Painting/Good Art
Before the emergence of postmodernism, it was unusual to hear the judgment ‘bad painting’ alloyed with ‘good art’ – a peculiar formula that became the title and theme of an exhibition held in Vienna in 2008.1 Opening in the summer of 2008, Bad Painting/Good Art was a major survey exhibition that displayed twenty-one painters representing approximately ninety years of art history. By offering such a gamut, it made a cogent argument for the prevale…
The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism
Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies
Book Review| August 01 2014 Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies. Edited by Eric A. Eliason and Tom Mould. University of Utah Press, 2013. 591 pp. $34.95 paper. Matthew Bowman Matthew Bowman Hampden Sydney College Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2014) 18 (1): 125–126. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2014.18.1.125 Views Icon Views Article contents Figur…
Antirevivalism and Its Discontents: Liberal Evangelicalism, the American City, and the Sunday School, 1900–1929
This article examines the rise of antirevivalism among a certain strain of American evangelicals in the first years of the twentieth century. It argues that, influenced by the new discipline of psychology of religion and growing fear of the chaotic environment of the early twentieth-century city, these evangelicals found revivalist evangelicalism to be psychologically damaging and destructive of the process of Christian conversion. Instead, they …
Matthew Philip Gill and Joseph Smith: The Dynamics of Mormon Schism
In 2007, Matthew Philip Gill, a resident of Derbyshire, England, announced the formation of the Latter Day Church of Jesus Christ. He claimed to be acting under angelic direction, and produced a new scripture, the Book of Jeraneck, to usher in his new faith. Gill's church is a restoration of a restoration: he claims to have restored the Mormon movement, which Joseph Smith founded as a restoration of the church Jesus organized, but which Gill clai…
Redrawing the Medium
Mormonism and its Historians: The State of the Field
This article introduces the history of the Mormon tradition - those churches which claim to descend from Joseph Smith - as well as, concurrently, the main currents of scholarship on Smith and Mormonism. It particularly focuses on the tensions between Mormon ecclesiastical leadership and scholars of Mormonism over the ownership of the past of a faith tradition very dependent upon a sacred history. Relatedly, it also discusses the broadening of Mor…
Rediscovering Aesthetics: Transdisciplinary Voices From Art History, Philosophy, and Art Practice by Francis Halsall, Julia Jansen, and Tony O'Conner (Eds)
Dan Graham: Beyond by Bennett Simpson and Chrissie Iles (Eds) Foreword by Jeremy Strick
Robert Ryman: Used Paint by Suzanne P Hudson
Timing Wax, Timing Art History
Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960 S by Carrie Lambert‐beatty
Unnatural Wonders: Essays From the Gap Between Art and Life by Arthur C Danto
Sin, Spirituality, and Primitivism: The Theologies of the American Social Gospel, 1885-1917
This article seeks to draw attention to an often overlooked aspect of the social gospel. Rather than explaining social gospelers as theological liberals who took an interest in social problems, as many historians have done, this essay argues that they were possessed of a unique theology, one which welded evangelical ideas of conversion and experiential Christianity with liberal postmillennial hopes. Their devotion to combating social ills should …
Sin, Spirituality, and Primitivism: The Theologies of the American Social Gospel, 1885-1917
This article seeks to draw attention to an often overlooked aspect of the social gospel. Rather than explaining social gospelers as theological liberals who took an interest in social problems, as many historians have done, this essay argues that they were possessed of a unique theology, one which welded evangelical ideas of conversion and experiential Christianity with liberal postmillennial hopes. Their devotion to combating social ills should …
Sin, Spirituality, and Primitivism: The Theologies of the American Social Gospel, 1885-1917
This article seeks to draw attention to an often overlooked aspect of the social gospel. Rather than explaining social gospelers as theological liberals who took an interest in social problems, as many historians have done, this essay argues that they were possessed of a unique theology, one which welded evangelical ideas of conversion and experiential Christianity with liberal postmillennial hopes. Their devotion to combating social ills should …
Unnatural Wonders: Essays From the Gap Between Art and Life by Arthur C Danto
Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960 S by Carrie Lambert‐beatty
Rediscovering Aesthetics: Transdisciplinary Voices From Art History, Philosophy, and Art Practice by Francis Halsall, Julia Jansen, and Tony O'Conner (Eds)
Dan Graham: Beyond by Bennett Simpson and Chrissie Iles (Eds) Foreword by Jeremy Strick
Robert Ryman: Used Paint by Suzanne P Hudson
Timing Wax, Timing Art History
Matthew Philip Gill and Joseph Smith: The Dynamics of Mormon Schism
In 2007, Matthew Philip Gill, a resident of Derbyshire, England, announced the formation of the Latter Day Church of Jesus Christ. He claimed to be acting under angelic direction, and produced a new scripture, the Book of Jeraneck, to usher in his new faith. Gill's church is a restoration of a restoration: he claims to have restored the Mormon movement, which Joseph Smith founded as a restoration of the church Jesus organized, but which Gill clai…
Redrawing the Medium
Mormonism and its Historians: The State of the Field
This article introduces the history of the Mormon tradition - those churches which claim to descend from Joseph Smith - as well as, concurrently, the main currents of scholarship on Smith and Mormonism. It particularly focuses on the tensions between Mormon ecclesiastical leadership and scholars of Mormonism over the ownership of the past of a faith tradition very dependent upon a sacred history. Relatedly, it also discusses the broadening of Mor…
Antirevivalism and Its Discontents: Liberal Evangelicalism, the American City, and the Sunday School, 1900–1929
This article examines the rise of antirevivalism among a certain strain of American evangelicals in the first years of the twentieth century. It argues that, influenced by the new discipline of psychology of religion and growing fear of the chaotic environment of the early twentieth-century city, these evangelicals found revivalist evangelicalism to be psychologically damaging and destructive of the process of Christian conversion. Instead, they …
Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies
Book Review| August 01 2014 Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies. Edited by Eric A. Eliason and Tom Mould. University of Utah Press, 2013. 591 pp. $34.95 paper. Matthew Bowman Matthew Bowman Hampden Sydney College Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2014) 18 (1): 125–126. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2014.18.1.125 Views Icon Views Article contents Figur…
The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism
Indiscernibly Bad: The Problem of Bad Painting/Good Art
Before the emergence of postmodernism, it was unusual to hear the judgment ‘bad painting’ alloyed with ‘good art’ – a peculiar formula that became the title and theme of an exhibition held in Vienna in 2008.1 Opening in the summer of 2008, Bad Painting/Good Art was a major survey exhibition that displayed twenty-one painters representing approximately ninety years of art history. By offering such a gamut, it made a cogent argument for the prevale…
Confidence amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O. McKay, 1951–1970
Book Review| January 01 2020 Confidence amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O. McKay, 1951–1970 Harvard Heath, ed. Confidence amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O. McKay, 1951–1970. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2018. Matthew Bowman Matthew Bowman Reviewed by Matthew Bowman is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University, where he serves as associate professor of history and religion.…
The Work of Art Criticism: Collaboration, Communication, Community
This essay aims to reconsider the practice of art criticism. The first part aims to clear away some misconceptions that reduce art criticism to a fundamentally negative discourse that asserts a theory/practice distinction. In the second part, the essay tries to think of art criticism as collaborative writing alongside rather than about an artist. The third part, however, highlights some problems insofar as communication and collaboration have bec…
The Birth and Life of the New Mormon History
Review Article| July 29 2020 The Birth and Life of the New Mormon History The Selected Letters of Juanita Brooks, edited by Craig S. Smith. University of Utah Press, 2019. 505 pages. $45.00 cloth; ebook available.Confessions of a Mormon Historian: The Diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971–1997, edited by Gary James Bergera. Signature Books, 2018. 3 vols., 2500 pages. $150.00 cloth.Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, by Richard Lyman Bushman. Knopf…
The Experience of Formalism
Violence and Atheism in the Age of Abolition
This essay offers an interpretation of certain sections of the American abolitionist movement before the Civil War. It posits that many antebellum opponents of slavery and enslaved people alike subscribed to a theory of Christianity that, following Scottish common-sense theology and the experiential, liberation-oriented Christianity of the enslaved, maintained that morality and immorality were equally comprehensible and perceivable to all humanit…
Looking for Global Mormonism
Global Mormon studies is an emerging frontier in the field of Mormon studies. The last decade has seen a marked increase in attention to global manifestations of Mormonism as scholars work to decenter the North American LDS Church in their analyses. This shift away from the North American church is a necessary intervention in the field of Mormon studies as the vast majority of work in the field has focused on the institutional church, its North A…
Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse
In the 1980s and 1990s, inspired by the work of scholars like David D. Hall, Robert Orsi, and Karen McCarthy Brown, students of American religion began to drift away from the study of formal theology and toward what they called “lived religion.” Best understanding of the impact of religious belief on the lives of believers required not analysis of texts scholars and leaders might produce, but rather how those ideas manifested in the behavior, pra…
The Reed Smoot Hearings: The Investigation of a Mormon Senator and the Transformation of an American Religion. Edited by Michael Harold Paulos and Konden Smith Hansen. The Saints and the State: The Mo…
Journal Article The Reed Smoot Hearings: The Investigation of a Mormon Senator and the Transformation of an American Religion. Edited by Michael Harold Paulos and Konden Smith Hansen. The Saints and the State: The Mormon Troubles in Illinois. By James Simeone Get access The Reed Smoot Hearings: The Investigation of a Mormon Senator and the Transformation of an American Religion. Edited by Michael Harold Paulos Konden Smith Hansen. Logan: Utah Sta…
The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America
Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith
As revealed in Stephen Taysom's new and magisterial biography Joseph F. Smith, son of the assassinated Hyrum Smith and the British convert to Mormonism Mary Fielding, lived a life suspended in the space between his parents. His father, of course, sat at the right hand of his brother Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, participated in the religion's highest councils, and was its presiding patriarch upon his death in 1844. His mother was a Brit…
Why Joseph Fielding Smith Rejected Space Flight: Anti-modernism and the Problem of Civilization
Joseph Fielding Smith served as an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for sixty years and its president for two. He published some three dozen books. He stands as perhaps its most influential twentieth-century intellectual. But despite that reputation, one of the more famous stories about his life has its roots in an April 1962 visit to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he said that human beings would never land on the moon. The Unite…
Art (15 works) · History (15 works) · Art history (14 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Citation (10 works) · Library science (10 works) · Mormonism, Religion, and History (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Law (7 works) · Literature (7 works)