Project Purpose and Scope

This blog is a preliminary effort devoted to the collection, dissemination, evaluation, and discussion of primary Mormon discourse.

My purposes are primarily scholarly. I am a professor of rhetoric at Iowa State University, and my area of focus is the rhetoric of religion. As a Latter-day Saint, I am especially interested in looking at my own religion as a movement that has navigated a very difficult path using strategic discourse to emerge as a major cultural, political, and religious world institution.

For now, my only intention is to begin collecting links to significant talks and other pieces of discourse relevant to the Mormon movement. Ultimately, I intend to organize various textual artifacts into three chronological categories: the generative period (1820 - 1890), the transitional period (1890 - 1930), and the assimilated period (1930 - present).