What is covered, week by week, and which topics each lecture draws on.
Each week’s lecture lays out the historical ground — the sources, the timeline, the people involved — that the lab then puts to work on one splinter group. Two lectures carry a full slide deck: week 1 sets up the four-part framework the rest of the semester applies, and week 6 doubles as the Assignment 1 review.
Before the Fracture: Nauvoo, 1844
The power centres inside Nauvoo before Joseph Smith's death, and the framework the semester tests against them
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
The Scramble
What each claimant to Smith's authority argued, in the six weeks between Carthage and the August conference
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
Charisma as Evidence
How the Twelve's claim at the August 8 conference was made, witnessed, and later written up
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
A Crowned King
Strang's letter of appointment, his coronation, and why the group didn't survive his death
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
Lineage as Doctrine
The Reorganization's succession theory, and the polygamy denial that became its founding pivot
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
An Institution Splits Under Pressure
Morrill, Edmunds–Tucker, and the 1890 Manifesto as the framework's fourth move playing out in federal court
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
Continuationism
Why a doctrine the mainstream church itself reversed became someone else's reason to split from it
Week 7 · 5 April 2027
The Pattern at Small Scale
Three minor splinters, three unrelated founders, the same four-part shape
Week 8 · 12 April 2027
Doctrine Tracks the Pivot
Why what a splinter group keeps and discards isn't random — it follows the argument that justified splitting
Week 9 · 19 April 2027
Two Kinds of Legitimacy
What a court can decide about a church, and what it pointedly can't
Week 10 · 26 April 2027
The Pattern Is Still Live
A 1980s schism inside a church that was itself born from schism, and what that says about the framework's reach
Week 11 · 3 May 2027
Wrap-Up
No new material — a short close to the semester before The Schism Map is due
Week 12 · 10 May 2027