Winner of the John Whitmer Historical Association 2023 Best Book Award
ABOUT THE BOOK
In the nineteenth century, a fascination with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made Mormons and Mormonism a common trope in French journalism, art, literature, politics, and popular culture. Heather Belnap, Corry Cropper, and Daryl Lee bring to light French representations of Mormonism from the 1830s to 1914, arguing that these portrayals often critiqued and parodied French society. Mormonism became a pretext for reconsidering issues such as gender, colonialism, the family, and church-state relations while providing artists and authors with a means for working through the possibilities of their own evolving national identity.
Surprising and innovative, Marianne Meets the Mormons looks at how nineteenth-century French observers engaged with the idea of Mormonism in order to reframe their own cultural preoccupations.
ARTICLES & REVIEWS
Masha Belenky, Review of Marianne Meets the Mormons, in Nineteenth-Century French Studies 52.3-4 (2024).
Wilfried Decoo, Review of Marianne Meets the Mormons, in Mormon Studies Review 11 (2024)
Andrea Goulet, Review of Marianne Meets the Mormons, in H-France Review, 23, no. 159 (September 2023).
Erik J. Freeman, Review of Marianne Meets the Mormons, in Journal of Mormon History 49, no. 3 (Summer 2023): 152-53.
Andrew Hamilton, “Andrew’s Best Books of 2022 by Academic Publishers in Mormon Studies,” Association of Mormon Letters (April 13, 2023)
Sam Mitchell, Review of Marianne Meets the Mormons, online forum for the Association for Mormon Letters (January 2023).
Ellie Smith, “A French Fascination with the Mormonism,” BYU College of Humanities (November 30, 2022).
Joseph Stuart, “2022 in Review: Article and Book Highlights,” Juvenile Instructor (November 30, 2022).
Brontë Hebdon, “Meet Marianne,” The Season, sponsored by the Center for Latter-day Saints Art (September 26, 2022).
PANELS & PODCASTS
“Marianne Meets the Mormons,” Mormon Studies Center, University of Utah, April 12, 2023.
“Marianne Meets the Mormons,” NCFS Unbound, Nineteenth-Century French Studies Association, March 10, 2023.
Podcast with Joseph Stuart, sponsored by BYU’s Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship [December 23, 2022]
Roundtable on Collaborative Research, sponsored by BYU’s Humanities Center [November 17, 2022]
Podcast with Richie Steadman, sponsored by the Cultural Hall [November 21, 2022]
Café Europa, sponsored by BYU’s European Studies program [October 25, 2022]
HEATHER BELNAP, PH.D. 