Richard Bushman

Richard L. Bushman was born on 20 June 1931, in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father, Ted Bushman (1902–1980), was a fashion illustrator, advertiser, and department store executive, and his mother, Dorothy Bushman (née Lyman; 1908–1995), was a secretary and homemaker. Bushman's family moved to Portland, Oregon, when he was a young child.[1]

After graduating from high school in 1949, Bushman spent two years as an LDS missionary in the northeastern United States. After completing his missionary service, he matriculated at Harvard University, graduating in 1955 with an A.B. magna cum laude in history.[1][3] Bushman married fellow historian Claudia Lauper Bushman in August 1955 and the couple raised six children. Bushman continued at Harvard as a graduate student, earning A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in the History of American Civilization, where he studied with distinguished early American historian Bernard Bailyn. While still a graduate student he was awarded the Sheldon Fellowship to work on his dissertation in London.[1]

Bushman first taught at Brigham Young University from 1960 to 1968 but two of those years he spent out on a doctoral fellowship to study history and psychology at Brown University. In 1967, he won the Bancroft Prize for his published dissertation, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765. Bushman was awarded a year-long fellowship in 1969 at Harvard's Charles Warren Center. At Harvard he was recruited to teach by Boston University. In 1977, Bushman transferred from Boston University to the University of Delaware to work with material culture at the Winterthur Museum. In an interview with Jed Woodworth, a historian, Bushman's "major work on refinement and gentility dated from those years, which included a year-long fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution."[1] In 1989, Bushman was asked to teach American Colonial history at Columbia University. During his time at Columbia he completed year-long fellowships at the Davis Center at Princeton, the National Humanities Center, and the Huntington Library. It was at the Huntington Library in 1997 that Bushman started his biography of Joseph Smith entitled Rough Stone Rolling. Bushman decided to retire from Columbia in 2001 to work full-time on the Joseph Smith biography.[1] Bushman was recognized by Columbia University and become the Gouverneur Morris Professor of History in 1992.[4] From 2008 to 2011, Bushman served as the first Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University and held a Huntington Library fellowship.[2][5][6][7] In 2012, the University of Virginia established the Richard Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon studies in the Department of Religious Studies. The chair was funded by a $3 million endowment by anonymous donors.[2]

Bushman addressing the John Whitmer Historical Association in 2011

Bushman's scholarship includes studies of early American social, cultural, and political history, American religious history, and the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). In 1968, Bushman's From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 won the Bancroft Prize, an award given by the trustees of Columbia University for the year's best book on American history. Bushman has also received the Phi Alpha Theta prize, and Evans Biography Awards, administered by the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies at Utah State University. He published Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, which was awarded best biography from the Mormon History Association in 1985.[8] Bushman has held Guggenheim, Huntington, National Humanities Center, and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships; and served as president of the Mormon History Association (1985–1986).[9] Bushman was honored at the January 2011 annual meeting of the American Historical Association (MHA) where a breakout session entitled A Retrospective on the Scholarship of Richard Bushman was heavily attended.[10]

Bushman is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He interrupted his undergraduate studies at Harvard to serve as a missionary in New England and Atlantic Canada where he overcame doubts about the existence of God and became convinced that the Book of Mormon was right.[11] He later held various positions within the LDS Church, including Seminary teacher, bishop, stake president, and stake patriarch.[12] On his decision to study the religion he is affiliated with Bushman replied, "Would you say that the only people who can do black studies are not blacks, or that to do women's studies you have to be a non-woman? You get all sorts of people who have deep personal commitments to a subject they teach, and that has its advantages."[5]

• From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765. Harvard University Press, 1967. ISBN 0-674-32551-6
• Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism. University of Illinois Press, 1984. ISBN 0-252-01143-0
• Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740-1745. Institute Of Early American History, University of North Carolina Press, Textbook reprint 1989. ISBN 0-8078-4260-5
• King and People in Provincial Massachusetts. University of North Carolina Press, textbook reprint 1992. ISBN 0-8078-4398-9
• The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. Random House, Incorporated, 1993. ISBN 0-679-74414-2
• Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America, with Claudia Lauper Bushman. Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-19-515022-8
• Believing History: Latter-Day Saint Essays, Edited by Jed Woodworth. Columbia University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-231-13006-6
• Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. Alfred Knopf, 2005. ISBN 1-4000-4270-4
• The Mormon History Association's Tanner Lectures, with Dean L. May, Reid L. Neilson, Thomas G. Alexander (Editor), Jan Shipps (Editor). University of Illinois Press, 2006. ISBN 0-252-07288-X
• On the Road with Joseph Smith: An Author's Diary. Greg Kofford Books, 2007. ISBN 978-1-58958-102-9
• Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 0-19-531030-6