Week 6 Lab: Polygamy, Doctrine to Liability: Assignment 1 Review

Federal pressure on the Utah church and the 1890 Manifesto, plus a working lab on Assignment 1 drafts

29 March 2027

Before the lab#

Bring a full draft of your Assignment 1 argument — the one applying the four-part framework to your chosen group. It doesn’t need to be finished; it needs to exist.

In the lab#

The Utah church’s own trajectory, from openly defending plural marriage to the Morrill and Edmunds–Tucker Acts seizing church property, to the 1890 Manifesto ending the practice — read here as an institution splitting under external, legal pressure rather than an internal succession crisis, and as an unusually clean example of the framework’s fourth move, institutional response. The second half of the lab is a working review of Assignment 1 drafts.

Afterwards#

Assignment 1 is due at the end of this week. Feedback from the review is meant to be actionable before then, not after.