A Maxwell Institute Guest Lecture
“Afflicting the Comfortable: Jane James, American Racism, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”
The story of Jane Elizabeth Manning James, who joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the early 1840s and died in Salt Lake City in 1908, provides a different angle on what it meant to be a Saint in the nineteenth century. In this talk, Dr. Quincy Newell will discuss a few important moments in James’s life and use them to explore how James’s racial identity made her religious experience fundamentally different from that of white Latter-day Saints. She will also discuss why her experience—including the racism she faced from other church members—still matters to our understanding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today.
About the Speaker
Quincy D. Newell is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Hamilton College. She has published several books and essays on the experiences of religious and racial/ethnic minorities in the American West. Among other honors, Newell received the 2018 Jane Dempsey Douglass Prize from the American Society of Church History and the 2017 Best Article in Mormon Women’s History prize from the Mormon History Association for her work on Jane James.
October 18
11 AM
Education in Zion Theater (JFSB)