Kelly Baker was all over facebook yesterday. The Florida State University facebook page was full of updates about the FSU Zombie Apocalypse in anticipation of Kellys public lecture yesterday afternoon hosted by FSUs Department of Religion entitled Theres us and the dead: The Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture. One of these updates identified Kelly as patient zero, or the origin of the zombie outbreak. On our way to the auditorium yesterday to set up Kellys lecture, we passed some students filming brief interviews with others who participate in the popular Humans vs. Zombies tag-oriented game. The Tallahassee Democrat (city paper) ran a story on the lecture to encourage attendees, and there was even an extra from AMCs The Walking Dead in attendance. This picture was posted live to the FSU facebook page.

Kelly has extensively investigated zombie genre movies, television, and fiction in order to identify the underlying themes of this genre and their ramifications beyond just zombies are cool and blowing up zombies is fun. Popular culture is not a neutral something that we consume; rather, zombie pop culture reflects larger cultural assumptions, visible, invisible, and everything inbetween. And Kelly has smartly identified how zombies are dangerous is ways far beyond the token zombie bite reference I could make here.

Kelly notes four distinct thematic moves in zombie eschatology: a working through of what it means to be human, an uplift of survival-at-all-cost ethics, a celebration of necessary violence, and a vision of the American nation in which the sweeping social reforms of the 20th century (the Civil Rights movements and the womens right movement) are swept away by zombies. In short, she wants to know what is at stake in the recurring tropes of zombie eschatology. Sure, the presence of survivors could denote a hopeful end where humanity has bonded together to survive together. But, Kelly asked, at what costs? And even more importantly, who survives? Some humans do endure the post-apocalyptic world, but they do so surrounded by mounds of mangled human and formerly-human zombie corpses and much of this destruction was done by their own hands.

What particularly struck me about Kellys lecture was what race and gender have to do with zombie apocalypses the who survives question. Again and again, the survivors of a zombie apocalypse are white, normatively heterosexual, and perform tired gender roles. The men are protecting, gun-slinging saviors of humanity. Woody Harrelsons character Tallahassee from Zombieland is hardly an oddball is this post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested world. The women become damsels in distress whose rescue becomes part of the main action, and even if they fight zombies alongside the men, romantic involvement domesticates them.

Not only do the survivors re-inscribe stereotypical gender roles, they often re-inscribe the disturbing assumed normativity of whiteness. The shambling, moaning zombies typically portray a wide range of racial and gender identities, which draws even more attention to white gun-slinging male and white emotionally-taxing female survivors. Racial and gender diversity defines the attacking force that needs to be dispatched. In a RAAC forum on American Religion and Whiteness, Tracy Fessenden and Edward Blum both identify how whiteness is an unmarked category and taken-for-granted in American religious history. The same can be said for zombie apocalypses. When the survivors are white, what does this say about the way we envision those who can save the world? Furthermore, if the survivors are inevitably the ones who will remake the world, then what does this say about an American popular culture that repeatedly selects whites to construct the post-apocalyptic world? Kelly raised other questions as well as did attendees in the Q&A about weapons, commodities, and fetishes; violence, war, and globalization; and the relationship between individualism and what it means to be human. The bottom line, zombies can tell us a lot.

According to the survey, more people believe in heaven than hell. That’s perhaps not surprising. Most of us like the idea of heaven more than hell.

But the report also showed that people who believed in both were more satisfied with their jobs, strove for excellence and found meaning in their work. This is how the report framed this discovery:

“The majority of people who absolutely believe in Heaven and Hell are always or often motivated by their faith to pursue excellence, which certainly would please most organization owners. This relationship is strongest among those who absolutely believe in Hell.”

So, what does this say to you? Why would it be that a strong belief in heaven and hell are a motivating factor in people’s lives?

In the wake of what could be the worst act of violence against Egyptian Christians in modern history, leaders of the Coptic Orthodox Church have called for three days of fasting and prayer for divine intervention, along with three days of mourning.

Romney addressed the issue a day after Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress dubbed Mormonism a “cult” following his endorsement of Texas Gov. Rick Perry at the gathering and moments before Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, said that Romney’s faith was “outside the mainstream of historic Christianorthodoxy.”

by Edward J. Blum

Boston was depressed. We were in town as part of an East Coast speaking tour (half on Jesus, half on the devil. I try to keep my relationship to the spirit world fair and balanced). The Red Sox had collapsed, and the malaise that had so long dominated the city before the Sox won the 2004 World Series was back. It didnt stop women and men, however, from declaring their loyalties through commodities. All over the city, the faithful of Red Sox nation donned their pro-Sox t-shirts with slogans like We Did it Again (to commemorate winning a second World Series in 2007). I kept wondering why a Bostonian would wear a Red Sox t-shirt after the epic decline. I asked others around me why individuals would maintain and promote this identity in light of such trouble, struggle, and despair. Didnt they have other t-shirts or hats? Was it laundry day for thousands of Bostonians?

And, of course, it led me to reflect on two relatively new books that deal with making and marking communities. Conveniently enough, they were the ones I read on the journey. One was by the distinguished scholar Ira Berlin, and the other came from the pen of a much younger historian Richard A. Bailey. Both examine how communities make meaning of themselves, experience those meanings amid good and hard times, and mark their communities through ideas, actions, and commodities.

Ira Berlin is known to all U.S. historians. Hes the genius author of the magisterial book Many Thousands Gone, a beautiful and comprehensive history of the North American slave trade. Now in The Making of African America, Berlin examines how four great migrations and the subsequent place-making between the movements created and re-created black America. The Middle Passage transformed African ethnic and national groups into Africans in America. Then the internal slave trade to the Deep South drove a huge number of African Americans inland and created the Cotton Belt or Black Belt. The Great Migration of the early and mid-twentieth century shifted black America from southern and rural to northern and urban. And finally, the fourth migration of new immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa in the past thirty-five years brought in new groups of black Americans.

The attacks occurred over the past three weeks in the heart of Ohio’s Amish population, one of the largest in the United States.

Call for Papers (Updated with Extended Deadline)

2012 Mormon History Association Conference

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Mormonism In Its Expanding Global Context: Invitations to New Interpretations and Understanding

The 47th annual conference of the Mormon History Association will be held a month later than usual June 28-July1, 2012 at the MacEwan Conference and Events Centre at the University of Calgary. The year 2012 marks the 125th anniversary of the establishment of the first Mormon settlement on Lees Creek (later Cardston) in southern Alberta by Charles Ora Card. Furthermore, July 1, 2012 will mark the 145th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation. Originally established in 1875 as Fort Calgary by the Northwest Mounted Police, Calgary has become a thriving metropolitan center to many of Canadas most successful oil, gas and transportation businesses. So come celebrate with us!

Building upon last years theme of global transformations, we intend to capitalize on Calgarys dynamic setting to invite papers that interpret the Restoration Movement in fresh, new ways. Canada is a richly diverse and cosmopolitan nation and as such beckons the immigration of new viewpoints on Mormon history. International studies of the Mormon experience and comparative studies with other faiths and their environments are encouraged; we also invite research that considers changing perspectives. For instance, how have media and the new era of electronic digitalization influenced the print culture of Mormon history and historical research? What influence has internationalization had on church structures and local memberships as well as interpreting our histories? To what extent has U.S. politics defined the internal understanding of Mormonism? How might various disciplinary lenses such as lived religion, theology, praxis, gender, race and ethnicity shape and reshape our understanding of the Mormon past? Beyond the standard North American perspective, how have local cultures, challenging economics, and national politics affected our interpretations?

The intersection of Canadian and Mormon history also begs scholarly inquiry. For example, how did the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1881 impact Mormon migration to Alberta? What unique legal and social challenges did Mormon polygamy encounter in Canada? How does the current debate in the Supreme Court of Canada over plural marriage challenge historical interpretations? How have the Restoration Movements developed in Canada? What of the challenges of secularization?

While we encourage presentations related to the conference theme, we also welcome high-quality proposals related to any and all aspects of Mormon/Restoration history. As a Program Committee we invite proposals for panels as well as individual papers. Innovative formats will also be considered. Please send an abstract of each paper (no more than 300 words) plus a short CV (no longer than two pages) as well as suggestions for session chairs and respondents. Previously published papers will not be considered. Young scholars are especially encouraged to participate. Generous donors have offered to pay travel expenses for some undergraduate and graduate students whose proposals are accepted. Student proposals should include estimated expenses if applying for a travel grant.

The deadline for proposals has been extended to November 1, 2011. Proposals should be sent by email to mhacalgary2012@gmail.com. If necessary, hard copies of proposals can be sent to Richard Bennett, 370D Joseph Smith Building, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be made by December 31, 2011. Additional instructions and information are available on the MHA website at http://www.mhahome.org.

by Elesha Coffman

As noted in Carol Faulkners post on American History Now, John McGreevy named religion and sexuality as a neglected research topic. I dont have a broad enough knowledge of scholarly trends to affirm or question this judgment, but sexuality certainly hasnt been a neglected topic at Princeton University this week. By coincidence, two scholars visited campus to discuss new work on religion and sexuality, and while the presentations were quite different, they both reflected a combination of concerns that have become pervasive in the fieldthe linguistic turn and attention to religious practice.

On Monday Christy Gardner, associate professor of communication at Wheaton College, gave a public lecture (sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion) on her new book Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric of Evangelical Abstinence Campaigns. Her central argument was that evangelicals gained traction for their abstinence message, which is preached at flashy events sponsored by parachurch organizations including True Love Waits, Silver Ring Thing, and Pure Freedom, by shifting from negative to positive rhetoric. Out: The just say no approach, accompanied by nit-picky lists of what the abstinent may not do. In: A creative appropriation of feminist ideas, promoting chastity as an empowering choice for young men and women, a way to reclaim control over their bodies in defiance of an MTV culture that insists teens are helpless slaves to hormones. Alongside this analysis of why abstinence rhetoric works (though the programs dont always work, delaying sexual debut for some teens some of the time), Gardner provided comparisons with evangelical abstinence programs in Africa. In that context there is less emphasis on personal empowerment, largely because Africans do not experience their lives as a succession of free choices.

On Thursday Bruce Dorsey, chair of the history department at Swarthmore College, visited the religion departments weekly American Religion workshop to share insights from his works in progress on two sex scandals in the 1830s, both involving evangelical clergymen. In 1833, in what was at that point the longest trial in American history, an itinerant Methodist minister named Ephraim K. Avery stood accused of impregnating and then murdering mill worker and fellow Methodist Maria Cornell. He was eventually acquitted, but this verdict, like so many others in high-profile cases, stirred rather than settled debate. In 1835 a Christian Connection revivalist named Eleazer Sherman was tried in an ecclesial court for making sexual advances to young men. Sherman was unapologetic, casting his actions as examples of Christian brotherhood, but the other ministers involved hastened to discredit his ministry and distance themselves from him as much as possible. Dorsey interpreted these scandals as evidence of shifting cultures of work, gossip, gender, and sexuality in the new republic. At a time of so much mobility, with so much in flux, scandals marked the collision of different sets of expectations. The fallout from those collisions radiated in all directions as people newly connected by print and popular culture attempted to make sense of what happened.

Though both presentations attended to religious leadersalbeit entrepreneurial ones whose success owed little to credentials or formal, institutional supportGardner and Dorsey followed the lived religion track in focusing on ways religious ideas play out in the everyday. Whats it like to sit in a strobe-lighted room full of teenagers yelling, Sex is great? How does this make sense to them? Or, what sorts of behaviors occurred when nineteenth-century revival preachers shared close quarters on the road? If different men perceived the same behaviors very differently, as in the Sherman case, why?

The more striking commonality between the presentations, to me, was their concentration on rhetoric and narrative. (Granted, Gardner is a rhetorician, not a historian, but I didnt find her presentation that different from something I might hear at AAR or ASCH, so for the purposes of this discussion Ill count her as one of us. I hope she doesnt mind.) In response to expected questions from the audience, Gardner was able to give statistics on the abstinence programs, but her real interest was how people talked about sexualityat rallies, in testimonies, in small groups, in Africa. Similarly, while Dorsey has spent enough time with the literature of the Avery case to form definite conclusions regarding who did what to whom, he was more interested in storytelling, especially the blurry line between Christian confession and gossip. When was a tale of sexual misbehavior evidence of contrition to nineteenth-century evangelicals, and when was it grounds for ostracism, even prosecution? Misreading that distinction could be extremely dangerous.

Perhaps now that attention to practice (including, often, deviant practice) and language has become widespread in the field, a surge of scholarship on religion and sexuality is on its way. I might get to test that hypothesis next week, when the CSR, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Center of Theological Inquiry sponsor a conference on the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible. Goodness knows theres plenty of racy stuff in there.