Session 201 (8:30 a.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 202 (8:30 a.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 203 (8:30 a.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 204 (8:30 a.m., Friday, September 25)
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Panel 211: (10:15 a.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 221 (2:00 p.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 222 (2:00 p.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 223 (2:00 p.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 224 (2:00 p.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 231 (4:15 p.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 232 (4:15 p.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 233 (4:15 p.m., Friday, September 25)
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Session 234 (4:15 p.m., Friday, September 25)
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President’s Address 241 (6:00 p.m., Friday, September 25)
Title: “What the Present Owes the Past”: Or, What Historians Owe LDS Church History by Matthew L. Harris
Abstract: Part autobiographical, part philosophical, Matthew L. Harris’s presidential address will zero in on the moral and ethical obligations that historians have in writing Mormon history. He will talk about the hazards of writing devotional histories, the hazards of writing critical histories and then offer solutions to bridge that critical divide. Most of his examples will draw from the work of LDS historians, as well as prominent historians from various universities in the United States and England. And finally, Harris will offer strategies to write good histories, including drawing on his own experience getting access to diaries, letters, and meeting minutes from top-ranking leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Matthew L. Harris is a professor of history at Colorado State University-Pueblo where he also directs the Legal Studies program. He received his BA and MA in history from Brigham Young University and his M.Phil and PhD, also in history, from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
An award-winning author and teacher, Harris has written, edited, or co-edited several books in LDS church history, including Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2024), which won the JWHA’s Best Book Award; Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right (University of Utah Press, 2020); The LDS Gospel Topics Series: A Scholarly Engagement (Signature Books, 2020); Thunder from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2019); The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History (University of Illinois Press, 2015). Before he began writing and researching Mormon history, he published Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2012); and The Founding Fathers and the Debate Over Religion in Revolutionary America (Oxford University Press, 2011). Harris’s work has been featured by Newsweek Magazine, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, Longreads, Religious News Service, and other news outlets. He has also been a guest speaker on numerous podcasts and an invited op-ed writer for the Salt Lake Tribune. His current writing projects include biographies of Mormon leaders Hugh B. Brown and J. Reuben Clark and an article exploring Black Student Activism at Graceland University in the 1960s and 1970s.
He considers it a great honor to be the 48th president of the JWHA.