A gathering of professional and amateur book collectors
Schedule
| Time | Event |
| 8:30 – 9:00 | Registration and Welcome in the Special Collections lobby |
| 9:00 – 10:30 | Plenary Panel | The Origins of the Book in the Americas in the Library Auditorium |
| 10:30-11:45 | Gallery Strolls + DIY Book Crafts (open) |
| 12:00-1:30 | Lunch + Luncheon Speaker |
| 1:30-2:45 | Seminars (limited spots) |
| 3:00-4:15 | Closing Plenary | Paper in Territorial Utah in the Library Auditorium |
Registration
Click below at the different class options to pick which class you want to attend and the optional choices of a provided lunch and/or an additional pre-conference workshop
Limited Seating Seminars
Class: Zitkála-Šá | The Writing of American Indian Rights
Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkála-Šá) was a Dakota writer and a leading activist for the civil rights of Native Americans in the early 20th century. This session will explore her life and legacy through her published writings and through the archival records she produced as the president of the National Council of American Indians, which are held in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections. [28 seats available]
Class: Libros de Arte | The Book as a Communication Method
This presentation will focus upon libros de arte, or artist books, from Latin America in order to examine their relevance in contemporary art, activism, visual literacy, knowledge formation, and preservation. It will begin by considering what artist books are, examining different varieties of artist books including books created with an express aesthetic purpose, fine and hand press books, activist and cartoñera books, and other works that are more difficult to define as artist books. [25 seats available]
Class: Publications of the Church of Jesus Christ in Latin America
In this session we will learn more about the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Latin America through a look at materials produced by members and missionaries. A variety of publications will be discussed, including mission newsletters, lesson manuals, training materials, scriptures, and hymnbooks. Before centralized correlation and translation began in the early 1970s, publications were created locally, each reflecting the diverse cultures and languages of Latin America. An examination of the various resources created in this region enriches our understanding of the growth of the Church in this area of the world. [28 seats available]
Class: Paris in Ruins
This session will draw from Dr. Lee’s extensive academic research and personal experience collecting evidence of the material culture of France, including the aftermath of the 1871 Paris Commune, and the nineteenth-century French fascination with Mormonism and the American West. Exploring items from his personal collection and BYU’s holdings, the session will consider how material culture (both print and image) has informed human communication and cultural identity. [25 seats available]
2023 Luncheon Speaker
Mark L. Grover
The 2023 A. Dean Larsen Book Collecting Conference committee is pleased to welcome Mark Grover as its keynote speaker. His presentation is entitled Telling the Story of “La Gente”: Collecting Historical Documents in Latin America.
Mark L. Grover was born and raised in Malad, Idaho. He served a mission to Brazil for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1966-1968. He has a B.A. in history and a Masters of Library and Information Science from Brigham Young University and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University in Latin American and African History. He worked as library faculty at BYU from 1973 to 2013. For most of those years he was a subject specialist with responsibility for building and referencing the Latin American and African collections. In 1996-1997, he served as the president of the international organization for Latin American librarians, The Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM).
Mark has published four books on librarianship and Latin America. His most recently finished manuscript is a history of the LDS South American Mission, 1925-1935. He and his late wife Ivelisse Colón Morales served a temple mission in the Campinas Brazil Temple prior to her death in July 2022. They have four children and eight grandchildren.
Presenter Biographies
Trevor Alvord
Trevor Alvord has been the curator of 21st Century Latter Day Saint Movements and Western Americana at the L. Tom Perry Special Collections since 2012. He is responsible for building the BYU web archive and collecting modern imprints, art, and media, to document Latter Day Saint historical and cultural expression. Before BYU, he served as a Processing Archivist at Utah State University and as Head of Special Collections at James Madison University. Trevor received undergraduate degrees from USU in History and Religious Studies in 2007 and his MLIS from San Jose State University in 2009.
Jessie Christensen
Jessie Christensen is the Romance Languages Catalog Librarian at the BYU Library, where she catalogs library materials in Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian. She has a BA in Spanish Translation and an MA in Spanish Literature from BYU, as well as an MLIS from San Jose State University. Her research focuses on the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Latin America during the twentieth century.
Mark Christensen
Mark Christensen is a Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is the author of six books and numerous book chapters and articles on the religious experience of the colonial Aztec and Maya. Specifically, Dr. Christensen’s research employs religious texts written by the Aztec and Maya in their own language to uncover their interpretations of Christianity.
Mary Eyring
Mary Eyring is an Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University. She specializes in early American literature and early Americans studies. Her book, Captains of Charity: The Writing and Wages of Postrevolutionary Atlantic Benevolence (UP New England, 2017), focuses on the texts that documented, promoted, or constituted benevolent work in transatlantic seaports during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She has published on the literary and cultural productions of American women, disability theory (including d/Deaf studies), and transatlantic print culture.
Matthew Hill
Dr. Matthew J.K. Hill (Matt) is the Latin American and Iberian Area Studies Librarian at the Harold B. Lee Library. He received his B.A. and M.A. from BYU’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, his M.L.I.S. from San José State University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. His area of specialization is the printing press and book circulation in the Spanish Philippines, taking a trans-oceanic perspective on the circulation of texts and ideas across the Spanish empire, and particularly focusing on the connection between the Philippines, Mexico, and Spain, from 1571 to 1813. He has also published on the printing press in the 19th century, both in Latin America and among Latin American diasporic and Latinx communities in the United States.
Betsy Hopkins
Betsy Hopkins is the Nursing Librarian at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, where she provides reference, collection management, instruction, and faculty liaison services. Her research focuses on how nurses use and evaluate information, and how nursing information literacy instruction can prepare future nurses more effectively. In addition, she has curated exhibits related to nursing history, specifically on Florence Nightingale and early Utah women in medicine, nursing, and midwifery. Betsy holds a BS in Biology and an MS in Library Science.
Meg Frost
Meg Frost, MLS is an associate librarian responsible for the medical collection at the BYU library. Her current research in the library focuses on the physiological impact of environmental stressors on students while studying. She also teaches a course on Women in Science.
Jordan Jones
Jordan Benjamin Jones is an assistant professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at Brigham Young University. He holds a PhD in Portuguese & Brazilian Studies from Brown University, as well as master’s degrees in Luso-Brazilian Literatures (Brigham Young University), secondary English education (Johns Hopkins University), and Hispanic Studies (Brown University). In addition to authoring several peer-reviewed articles, Jordan has published multiple translations, including The Myth of Economic Development, by Brazilian economist Celso Furtado (Polity Press, 2020). His research interests include human rights and race in contemporary literature/culture, 19th-century antislavery texts, translation, and inter-American literary studies.
Maggie Kopp
Maggie Gallup Kopp is the Curator of Rare Books at L. Tom Perry Special Collections in the Harold B. Lee Library, where she is responsible for the European historical collections and rare British and American literature. Maggie holds an MA in Medieval studies from Fordham University and an MS in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.
Daryl Lee
Daryl Lee is professor of French and chair of the Department of French and Italian at Brigham Young University. His teaching areas include advanced French language, French literature (19th-century poetry, novel), and film studies (French cinema, film theory). His research fields include French literature, culture, and cinema, and he has authored articles on urban culture, poetry, and the aesthetic of ruins in late nineteenth-century France. Most recently, he coauthored, with Heather Belnap and Corry Cropper, Marianne Meets the Mormons: Representations of Mormonism in Nineteenth-Century France (U of Illinois Press, 2022), which deals extensively with French views of the American West. His archival work has led to more than one amateur collector bargain.
Chris McAfee
Chris received a BFA in printmaking in 1993 from Brigham Young University where he began learning to bind books. He went on in 1995 to receive an MFA in bookbinding from the University of Alabama where he began learning book conservation. He has spent the last 20 years conserving and preserving books, documents, photographs, and other artifacts. He currently works for the BYU Library as Head Conservator.
John Murphy
John Murphy is the Curator for 19th and 20th Century Latter Day Saint Movements & Western Americana Manuscripts at L. Tom Perry Special Collections. He has a BA in History from Brigham Young University, an MSLIS degree from Simmons College, and an MA in Comparative History from Brandeis University. John previously worked as a Special Collections Librarian at the University of Arizona and began his career at BYU in 2002. His research interests include documentary editing, the international history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the history of Latter-day Saint popular culture. He enjoys skiing, hiking, and traveling with his family.
Richard Saunders
Dr. Richard Saunders is Professor of Library/Information Science at the Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University. He is the author of 9 books, including the two-volume Dale Morgan on the Mormons: Collected Works, 1938–1970 (Arthur H. Clark Co., 2012–2013), A Yellowstone Reader: The National Park in Popular Fiction, Folklore, and Verse (U of U Press, 2003) and Printing in Deseret: Mormons, Politics, Economy, and Utah’s Incunabula 1849–1851 (U of U Press, 2001). His most recent publication, from Legacy Press, is Reams in the Desert: Papermaking in Utah, 1849-1893.
Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart is the Humanities, Communications, and Global Women’s Studies Librarian at the BYU Library. Her scholarship focuses on connecting students with the diverse research resources in an academic library, and the intersection of women’s history with the humanities. Elizabeth earned an MLS from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in American Studies and Folklore from Utah State University.
Peter Tanner
Peter Tanner (He, Él, Ele) is Instructor of Spanish at Utah State University and Editor of Openings: Studies in Book Art, the journal of the College Book Art Association. He has a Bachelors of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking from the University of Utah, a Masters degree in Latin American Art History from the University of Texas, San Antonio, and a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Utah. His research focuses on artist books from Latin America.
Mike Taylor
Dr. Michael P. Taylor is associate professor of English and co-director of American Indian studies at Brigham Young University. He is coauthor of Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School from the University of Arizona Press. His scholarship has appeared in such venues as American Quarterly, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Modernism/modernity. His research focuses on federal Indian boarding schools, Indigenous modernity, and Indigenous literary activism.
Sheri Tesseyman
Sheri Tesseyman completed a bachelor’s degree in nursing at the University of Utah and a master’s degree in nursing with an emphasis on community nursing at Brigham Young University. She practiced community nursing in Mexico and subsequently obtained a master’s degree in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Utah and worked with the Utah Rural Development Corporation caring for migrant farm workers in Utah County. She practiced hospital intensive care nursing for eighteen years in Salt Lake City and Leeds, England while raising three children with her husband, David, a native of Yorkshire. She currently enjoys caring for patients at Huntsman Cancer Hospital. Dr. Tesseyman earned a Ph.D. from the University of Manchester’s History of Nursing Program in the United Kingdom. She is an assistant professor at the BYU College of Nursing where she teaches nursing and does research into the history of hospital nursing in England and the United States of America.