Megan Sanborn Jones Talks About Her New Book, 'Contemporary Mormon Pageantry'

Department of Theatre and Media Arts

Megan Sanborn Jones is a theatre professor and associate chair in the BYU Department of Theatre and Media Arts. Her book, “Contemporary Mormon Pageantry,” was published by the University of Michigan Press on Oct. 1.

Q: What sparked your initial interest in the subject material?

A: I spent the first 10 years of my career working on Mormon performance in the 19th century, but I was looking specifically at anti-Mormon melodramas on the professional American stage. I finished my first book and started looking around at other places where Mormons were showing up, things like handcart trek reenactments and Mormon appearances on ‘So You Think You Can Dance.’

I knew pageants were going on, but I had never seen one. I had colleagues who were working on them, so I thought, here we have Mormons being Mormons—we’re producing our own performances. I’m curious about how Mormons represent themselves on stage, so Mormons in pageants in the 20th and 21st centuries seemed to logically follow the first part of my career researching the 19th century.READ MORE