Prospective Students

CGU does not offer a degree specifically in Mormon studies, because academics degrees are in a discipline, rather than in a topic. Mormon studies is the latter, and therefore, our students approach Mormon studies through a specific discipline.

Students interested in Mormon studies should first determine how they want to study Mormonism. The two most common paths students choose are through the department of religion or the department of history. But some students choose to study Mormonism through the methods of another discipline, like literature or politics. View information about CGU’s various departments, all of which support work on Mormonism.

One can emphasize Mormon studies in either a PhD or a masters’ program. The holder of the Howard W. Hunter Chair regularly directs dissertations and masters’ theses focusing on the study of Mormonism.

Contact Us

Every semester, the holder of the Howard W. Hunter Chair offers a course on Mormonism, many of which compare the Mormon tradition to other religious traditions. These courses approach Mormonism from the perspective of a variety of disciplines. Courses offered in the past include:

“Mormonism as a New Religious Movement”
This course explores how academics understand the emergence, growth and transformation of new religious movements, like Scientology or Wicca, using Mormonism as a primary example.

“American Women in Mormonism, Roman Catholicism, and Evangelicalism”
This course compares the history of women in three American Christian traditions.

“The Book of Mormon”
This course considers the variety of ways the Book of Mormon has been studied and used, and how different academic approaches – the study of literature, philosophy, archaeology, and history – have been used to understand it.

“The Mormon Theological Tradition”
Using a theological and philosophical approach, this course evaluates the history and future of Mormon intellectual life.

“Globalization, Religion, Mormonism”
This course asks what happens to religion as it expands globally, using the expansion of Mormonism outside the United States as a case study.

Claremont Graduate University hosts the Center for Global Mormon Studies, which operates a number of projects aimed at the study of international Mormonism, including the digital humanities Mormonism and Migration Project, an effort to gather and digitize archives relevant to the study of global Mormonism, a series of podcasts, and the Global Mormon Oral History project. Mormon studies students work on all of these.

We also sponsor an active Mormon Studies Student Association which focuses on professionalization. The MSSA meets regularly via technology with journal editors, conference organizers, and scholars in the field.

Interested students can reach out to the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon studies, Matthew Bowman, at matthew.bowman@cgu.edu. They should also reach out to David Altman, who is in charge of admissions for the School of Arts and Humanities, where the Mormon studies program resides. He can be reached at david.altman@cgu.edu. Dr. Bowman can speak to questions about the program; David Altman can speak to questions of financial aid and admissions procedures.