UVA Mormon Studies Affiliates

David Howlett is a lecturer of religion at Smith College where he teaches about religion in America. He is the author of Kirtland Temple: The Biography of Shared Mormon Sacred Space (University of Illinois Press, 2014) and Mormonism: The Basics (Routledge, 2017). A scholar of the RLDS/Community of Christ, he studies the church’s liberalization in the 20th century.

Howlett was a 2024 Clyde Research Fellow for his research project “Beehive Girls and the Priesthood: Reactions to Women’s Ordination and Feminism in Church Curriculum in the 1970s and 1980s”.

Nancy Ross is an associate professor and the department chair of the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Department at Utah Tech University, where she has taught for 20 years. She researches LDS and Community of Christ women, women’s ordination movements, and issues related to Mormon feminism. Her book, co-authored with Jessica Finnigan and Larissa Kanno Kindred, Mormon Garments: Sacred and Secret (University of Illinois Press, 2026), examines the meaning and lived experiences of those who wear garments through the lenses of gender and belief.

Ross was a 2024 Clyde Research Fellow for her research project “Beehive Girls and the Priesthood: Reactions to Women’s Ordination and Feminism in Church Curriculum in the 1970s and 1980s”.

William Perez received a bachelor’s in Communication Arts from Florida International University, a Master’s in Religious Education from Brigham Young University, and a PhD in American Religious History from Florida State University. He researches the intersection of religion, emotion, and politics, with a specialization in Mormon history and a secondary emphasis in Afro-Caribbean religious traditions.

Perez was the UVA Mormon Studies Library Research Fellow in 2025 for his research project “Monarchs of the New Republic: Mormonism, Republicanism, and the Dispute of Happiness.”

David Walker teaches about religion, technology, and popular culture in North America during the 19th and 20th centuries. His first book, Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2019. His current project is a cultural history of Mormon professional wrestling titled The Mormon Giant.

Walker was a UVA Mormon Studies Library Research Fellow in 2023, allowing him to expand his study of 20th century Mormon wrestlers and their relationship to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.