It's the Maxwell Institute podcast.

I'm Blair Hodges.

In some ways, it was a lonelier than usual summer here at the Neely Maxwell Institute

for Religious Scholarship.

Since the Institute was founded in 2006, we've had the privilege of hosting the summer

seminar on Mormon culture.

It's a remarkable research opportunity that's somewhat legendary for the people that have passed through it.

People like Reed Nelson at the Church History Library, Patrick Mason and Kathleen Flake, who hold chairs in Mormon studies at universities on the East and West Coast.

And the Institute's own brand new executive director, Spencer Flumann, they've all been through the seminar.

Students, scholars,

junior faculty, a variety of different people come together to study a particular aspect of Mormon culture or history,

and then they write working papers to share some of the things they discovered and to prompt further research.

Instead of hosting the seminar this year, the Maxwell Institute hosted a scholars colloquium in honor of Richard Bushman. He's the Mormon historian who started the summer seminar back when he was working on

his biography of Joseph Smith in 1997. Richard's still active in his research, but he'll be leaving

the direction of future summer seminars in the capable hands of Terrell Givens and possibly others.

So we want to say to Richard, thanks for everything you've done.

We look forward to seeing more from you. So again, we didn't hold the summer seminar this year.

So let's look back at last year's seminar and get a better sense of what it's all about.

I had the chance to get to know many of last year's participants as I sat down with them and talked about their experiences.

So we're talking about the summer seminar on Mormon culture in this episode of the Maxwell Institute podcast.

I hope you enjoy it.

And at the end of this episode, you'll hear an announcement about an exciting new feature on the Maxwell Institute website.

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