2019-20 Appomattox Project Events

Portrait of Ben Park 

Appomattox Project Brownbag Discussion Series

Joseph Smith's
Kingdom of Nauvoo

A Crucial Episode in Understanding American Religious and Political History


Benjamin E. Park

Assistant Professor of History, Sam Houston State University
author of Kingdom of Nauvoo, The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier

Wednesday, March 4th, 2020
12:00 - 12:50 p.m.
Clarke Building, Room 511 

 
Co-sponsored with UVU's Department of History & Political Science,
Religious Studies Program, and Center for the Study of Ethics

 

Benjamin E. Park received his Ph.D. in history at the University of Cambridge and teaches religious history at Sam Houston State University. He is the co-editor of Mormon Studies Review, author of Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier, and is currently editing Blackwell’s Companion to American Religious History. His most recent book, Kingdom of Nauvoo, uses recently released sources, to excavate the brief, tragic life of a lost Mormon city, demonstrating that the Mormons are essential to understanding American history writ large. Park shows that far from being outsiders, the Mormons were representative of their era in their distrust of democracy and their attempt to forge a sovereign society of their own.

Dr. Park has received fellowships from the University of Missouri’s Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, Boston University’s American Political History Institute, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Brigham Young University’s Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. His scholarship has appeared in Journal of the Early RepublicEarly American Studies, Journal of American Studies, American Nineteenth Century History, Journal of Religion and Society, and Journal of Mormon History. Dr. Park has been invited to speak at institutions including Oxford University, Auburn University, and the College of Charelston, and has delivered papers at annual conferences including the American Historical Association, American Society of Church History, and the Society for United States Intellectual History.

His s public writing includes essays in NewsweekWashington PostTalking Points MemoDallas Morning NewsReligion and Politics, Religion Dispatches, Christian Century, and Patheos. He is a founder of both The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History and Juvenile Instructor: A Mormon History Blog. Dr. Park has served on editorial boards for Journal of Mormon History and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and currently serves on the executive board for the Mormon History Association.