The Secular Syllabus and the Sacred Book: Literary Scholars Approach the Book of Mormon

Perhaps the last thing that can be decided about a history is when it begins. I might choose any number of origin points for the emergence of what I'll here call the recent literary turn in Book of Mormon scholarship. Acknowledging that any act of intellectual periodization is artificial, I'll begin this account with the arrival nearly ten years ago of a pair of scholarly articles, Elizabeth Fenton's 2013 “Open Canons: Sacred History and American History in The Book of Mormon” and Jared Hickman's 2014 “The Book of Mormon as Amerindian Apocalypse.”¹ The two pieces, published in quick succession in major journals of American literature, and alike in critical sophistication, seemed to signal that the Book of Mormon had at last breached the walls of English departments in the American academy. The twin appearances of Fenton's and Hickman's articles were heralded by a brace of review essays within...