Annual Meeting, 21–22 February 2003, at Utah Valley State College. “Passing the Portals: Mormon Literature for the Twenty-firat Century.” Chaired by Cherry Silver and Jen Wahlquist, Co-sponsored by the Association for Mormon Letters; the Religious Studies Program in the Center for the Study of Ethics, UVSC; and the Department of English, UVSC.
All of the papers can be found here.
Friday, February 21, 9:00 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. (No registration or entrance fees required)
- Location: All Friday sessions will take place in the South Presidential Suite at the David O. McKay Special Events Center, Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah.
- Keynote speaker: Emma Lou Thayne, poet and essayist, on “Messianic Mormon Literature” (published as “The Place of Knowing”)
The Tragedy of Brigham City: How a Film about Morality Becomes Immoral
Michael Minch
The Novelization of Brigham City: An Odyssey
Marilyn Brown
Pious Poisonings and Saintly Slayings: Creating a Mormon Murder Mystery Genre
Lavina Fielding Anderson
Murder Most Mormon: Swelling the National Trend (Part II): Conspiring to Commit
Paul M. Edwards, read by Tom Kimball
God and Man in The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
Bradley D. Woodworth
A Spycho-Social Evaluation of Edgar Mint
Charles I. Woodworth
Brady Udall, the Smart-Ass Deacon on the Front Row Grows Up and Moves to the Back Row
Mary L. Bingham Lee
Egypt and Israel versus Germany and Jews: Comparing Margaret Blair Young’s Home without Walls to the Bible
Nichole Sutherland
Slightly Weird but Conservative Religious People: The Rhetorical Function of Mormons in Science Fiction Ivan Wolfe
Stone Tables: Believable Characters in Orson Scott Card’s Historical Fiction
Holly King
Out of the Mouth of Babes: An Analysis of Orson Scott Card’s Use of Dialogue in Ender’s Game
Casey Vanderhoef
Subversion and Containment in Xenocide
Daniel Muhlestein
Saturday, February 22, 8:45 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (Registration table opens at 8:00 a.m.)
- Location: Saturday’s conference will convene in UVSC’s Computer Science Building, large lecture hall (CS 404), and then split into concurrent sessions there and in the Student Center (206A and 206B).
- Keynote speaker: Writer and scholar Marilyn Arnold on “Art and Soul: Lessons from Willa Cather for Mormon Writers, Critics, and Audiences”
- Saturday Sessions
Essays in the Eugene England Tradition
Reading of the 2003 Eugene England Essay Contest winner Charlotte England
“I Write Personal Essays to Save My Soul”: The Sermonic Roots of Eugene England’s Literary Voice
Travis Manning
Young Adult Writing
Bridging the Divide: Writing about the Spirit for the National Young Adult Market
Kimberley Heuston
Real Life, Who Needs It?: Real World Influences on the Writing of Young Adult Fiction
Randall Wright
Scriptural Links
Defiling the Hands with a Holy Book: Future of Book of Mormon Scholarship
Mark Thomas
Cities of Refuge: A Metaphor for Writers
Harlow S. Clark
Folklore
Gathering in Nauvoo: Remembrances of the Lofgren Family
Elizabeth Mangum
Sister Bean and Satan’s Power: A Look at Contemporary LDS Legends
Ronda Walker Knudsen
Humor and Liminality: The Function of Folklore in the Novels of Robert Farrell Smith Kristi Bell
Issues in Writing
Mormon Women Writers and the Healing Power of Truth
Kelly A. Thompson
Wallace Stegner’s Gathering of Zion: Creating a Usable Mormon Past
Jennifer Minster Asay
Telling the Truth: Teaching Creative Writing to LDS Students
Jack Harrell
Views on Culture, Environment, and Film
The Cultural Shaping of American LDS Women
Jacqueline Thursby
Questing I, Altogether Other, or Both? Three Poems and a Prose Bit on Nature
Patricia Gunter Karamesines
My Big Fat Greek Wedding as a Model for LDS Filmmakers
Eric Samuelsen
Story Tellers
“Dangerous Questions Affecting Closer Interests”: Subversion and Containment in The Senator from Utah by Josephine Spencer
Kylie Turley
A Mind-Body-Spirit Assault: The True Antagonist in The Giant Joshua
Michelle Ernst
Writing Out of a Religious Perspective
Holiness Emerging from My Mouth
Jacqueline Osherow
Writing Religion from a Christian Perspective
David McGrynn
The Power of Parables
Sarah Read
The Threat of Mormon Cinema
Gideon O. Burton
- AML luncheon: Featuring award presentations and the AML presidential address by Gideon Burton, “Our Mormon Renaissance”
- Complimentary evening buffet: After the conference, this complimentary gathering at a nearby home will feature readings from award winners and a light supper.
AML-Sponsored Sessions at Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Convention,
October 9-11, 2003:
Mormon Identity in American Culture
Laraine Wilkins (Harvard University)
The Mormon Poet in Exile: Poetry, Identity, and the Case of May Swenson
Melissa Smith
Movie Mormons: Contemporary Images of Latter-day Saints in Film
Travis Manning (Eastern Washington University)
Narratives of Internal Landscape: Mormon essayists Elouise Bell and Tessa Meyer Santiago as Compared with Annie Dillard and Joan Didion.
Gideon O. Burton (Brigham Young University) and Robert Means (Brigham Young University)
Parameters and Perimeters of an Ethnic Literature: Creating the Mormon Literature Database Gideon Burton, Connie Lamb, Robert Means, and Larry Draper
AML Writers’ Conference, November 1, 2003, Provo City Library. “Writing LDS-Themed Stories For Us and For Them.” Featured Speakers: Rulon Burton, Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury, Jongiorgi Enos, Kurt Hale, Carol Lynch Williams, Kenny Kemp, Eric Samuelsen, Ron Woods, and Rick Walton.