Kathleen Flake, a scholar of early Mormonism, has been named the first occupant of a new chair in Mormon studies at the University of Virginia. The chair, named for the historian Richard Lyman Bushman and supported by a $3 million endowment from anonymous donors, is the first of its kind at a major public university, and the first in the East.
Ms. Flake, who previously taught at Vanderbilt University, is part of a new generation of scholars, many of them non-Mormon, who are looking at the Mormon experience in the broader context of American history and culture. Starting in the spring she will teach a course on newer American religious movements like Scientology, the Nation of Islam and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (as the Mormon church is officially known), as well as a course on the many scriptural texts created in America, including many different versions of the Bible as well as Bible-like texts like the Book of Mormon.
She will also continue work on a study of 19th-century Mormon plural marriage, which she argues was part of a broader ritual system conveying reciprocal “priestly authority” on both men and women.
The creation of the chair at Virginia, which has one of the largest religious studies programs in the country but no affiliation with any seminary or church body, has been hailed as the latest sign of the mainstreaming of Mormon studies. But Ms. Flake, who is Mormon, said in an interview last year with The New York Times that the field still needed more scholars from outside the faith, especially those who were ready to analyze its spiritual substance seriously.
“There’s something really curious here that helps you understand not just Mormonism, but religion per se,” she said.