Terryl Givens

Terryl Lynn Givens is a senior research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University (BYU). Until 2019, he was a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, where he held the James A. Bostwick Chair in English.

Terryl Givens
Terryl Givens in 2018
Born	Terryl Lynn Givens
Nationality	American
Occupation(s)	James A. Bostwick Professor of English and Religion, University of Richmond
Spouse	Fiona Givens
Website	TerrylGivens.com

Givens is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). As a young man, he served a mission in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and later graduated from BYU with a degree in comparative literature. He did graduate work in intellectual history at Cornell and earned a PhD in comparative literature from the University of North Carolina, working with Greek, German, Spanish, Portuguese and English languages and literature. A longtime collaborator with his wife, Fiona Givens, he is the co-author of The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life and Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith.

The New York Times referred to his work as "polemical" and "provocative" while Harper's praised him for being "fair-minded and unbiased."

Personal life

Givens has served in the LDS Church as a bishop in a local congregation.

Publications

Books

• Dragon Scales and Willow Leaves. Putnam Juvenile, 1997. ISBN 978-0399226199
• The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy. Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-19-510183-6
• By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion. Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-19-513818-4
• The Latter-day Saint Experience in America. Greenwood Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-313-32750-6
• People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture. Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-516711-5
• The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-536931-1
• When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought. Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-19-531390-1
• Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism (with Matthew J. Grow). Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-19-537573-2
• The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life (with Fiona Givens). Ensign Peak, 2012. ISBN 978-1609071882
• The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith (with Fiona Givens). Deseret Book, 2014. ISBN 978-1609079420
• Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity. Oxford University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0199794928
• The Christ Who Heals: How God Restored the Truth that Saves Us (with Fiona Givens). Deseret Book, 2017. ISBN 978-1629723358
• The Pearl of Greatest Price (with Brian M. Hauglid). Oxford University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-0190603861
• All Things New: Rethinking Sin, Salvation, and Everything in Between (with Fiona Givens). Faith Matters Publishing, 2020. ISBN 978-1953677020
• Mormonism: What Everyone Needs to Know®. Oxford University Press, 2020. ISBN 978-0190885083

Edited volumes

• Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries (with Reid L. Neilson) Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0195369762
• The Columbia Sourcebook of Mormons in the United States (with Reid L. Neilson) Columbia University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0231149426
• The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism (with Philip L. Barlow) Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-1904-6350-2

Articles and papers

• Mimesis and the Limits of Semblance. Ph.D. Diss. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1988
• "Blind Men and Hieroglyphs: The Collapse of Mimesis." European Romantic Review 2.1 (1991): 61–80.
• "Aristotle's Critique of Mimesis: The Romantic Prelude." Comparative Literature Studies 28.2 (1991): 121–136.
• "Romantic Agonies: Human Suffering and the Ethical Sublime." Romanticism Across the Disciplines (1998): 231–53. ISBN 978-0761811039
• "'This Great Modern Abomination': Orthodoxy and Heresy in American Religion." Mormons and Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion (2001). ISBN 978-0252026096
• "Joseph Smith: Prophecy, Process, and Plenitude." in BYU Studies 44.4 (2005): 55–68.
• "'Lightning Out of Heaven': Joseph Smith and the Forging of Community." BYU Speeches 24 (2005).
• "New Religious Movements and the Orthodoxy: The Challenge to the Religious Mainstream." FARMS Review of Books 19.1 (2007): 201–221.
• "'There Is Room for Both': Mormon Cinema and the Paradoxes of Mormon Culture." BYU Studies 46.2 (2007): 188–208.
• "'Common Sense' Meets the Book of Mormon: Source, Substance and Prophetic Disruption." Revisiting Thomas F. O'Dea's The Mormons: Contemporary Perspectives (2008): 79–98. ISBN 978-0874809206
• "Joseph Smith's American Bible: Radicalizing the Familiar." Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 18.2 (2009): 4–17.
• "Paradox and Discipleship." Religious Educator 11.1 (2010): 142–155.
• "Fraud, Philandery, and Football: Negotiating the Mormon Image." International Journal of Mormon Studies 4 (2011): 1–13.
• "The Prophecy of Enoch as Restoration Blueprint" Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture Series, No. 18 : Utah State University Press, 2013.

External links

• Terryl Givens Official Website
• The Mormons PBS Frontline Documentary