Liberating Paradox(i)es: Tensions, Texts of Comparison, Twitter, and Emma Lou Thayne
After finishing part 3 with a reading of Timothy Liu’s short poem, “The Tree that Knowledge Is”—a reading based in and flowing from a nodal model of Mormon culture—I fully intended to move into an extended exploration of Waterman’s suggestions for Mormon criticism: 1) read [...]

Although I remembered most of the plot of Salvador (Amazon), re-reading it five or six years after my initial encounter with it was still an experience of surprise and intensity. And oddly, I think it was an even more intense experience because since I already knew, sorta recalled the basic narrative  and thematic arc for [...]

Note: This is just a teaser, really, to prepare you for Part 4. (Coming next week.)
That, or it’s mid-term week and I haven’t had time to flesh out the next post.
Either way. On to Part 3.5.
Roughing Out a Theory and a Course in Mormon Lit
i. The Theory
As I was scripturing this morning in Jacob 5, [...]

I take up today where I left off Thursday.
Liberating Paradox(i)es: Nodes, Networks, and Timothy Liu’s “Tree”
I recognize I may be preaching to the choir here (in the radical middle) by advocating such a pluralist view of Mormon culture—one, I should confess, that I hope can encourage more space in the Mormon critical community for the [...]

I take up today where I left off Tuesday.
More or Less Mormon? The Problem(atizing) of Mormon Identity
In his 1997 Dialogue article, “‘Awaiting Translation’: Timothy Liu, Identity Politics, and the Question of Religious Authenticity,” Waterman interrogates the notion of a coherent Mormon cultural identity, a religious sense of communal self constructed around nineteenth century Mormonism’s flirtation [...]

Note: What follows is part one of a serialized essay in/on Mormon literary criticism. It was catalyzed by William’s series on the radical middle and some other recent posts elsewhere dealing with the problem(s) of Mormon literature (that litany of links is just a sample). My hope is that this series and any ensuing discussion [...]

So now that I’ve explored the origins of the term radical middle in relation to Mormon arts and culture, and teased out some of the issues related to the middle, it’s time to get radical. In the first post, I mentioned a radical movement in British Islam and noted the adjectives (creative, positive, revolutionary …) [...]

Several months ago Theric asked me to define the radical middle — this term that I and others at AMV have been throwing around. More recently, Association for Mormon Letters President Boyd Petersen invoked the same phrase in his inaugural post on The Dawning of a Brighter Day. I’m hesitant to write manifestos or get [...]