Angelic weather vane rendering for the Nauvoo Temple.
About the Foundation
The Smith-Pettit Foundation was established in 1999 to support contributions to Mormon studies through research, writing, publications, conferences, and related activities; and to promote independent thought, analysis, and critical inquiry regarding Mormonism, broadly defined.
Among other activities, Smith-Pettit identifies research and writing projects to support, then contracts with individual scholars to undertake these projects as works-for-hire for the foundation. Upon a project’s completion, Smith-Pettit determines the best avenues for dissemination.
Smith-Pettit co-owns Signature Books Publishing LLC, with which it partners to support contributions in a variety of formats to Mormon studies. Smith-Pettit also collaborates with other, similarly focused non-profit foundations. Smith-Pettit is an 501c3 non-profit operating foundation headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Administration
Martha Bradley-Evans was the senior associate vice president of Academic Affairs, professor in the College of Architecture and Planning, dean of Undergraduate Studies, and teaches for the Honors College at the University of Utah, where she received the Distinguished Teaching Award, the Student Choice Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Bennion Center Service Learning Professorship, and the honorary title of “University Professor, 1999–2000.” In 2020, she was awarded the Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence, the highest honor available to faculty at the university.
Previously, she taught in the history department at Brigham Young University, where she also received an award in teaching excellence. Bradley-Evans has also served as president of the Mormon History Association and co-editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Her published books include Kidnapped from that Land: The Government Raids on the Short Creek Polygamists; Four Zinas: A Story of Mothers and Daughters on the Mormon Frontier; A History of Kane County; Pedestals and Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights; and Glorious in Persecution: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1839–1844. She has served as the vice chair of the Utah State Board of History and the chair of the Utah Heritage Foundation. In 2013, she received the Leonard Arrington Award for Meritorious and Distinguished Service to Mormon History, the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Communal Studies Association, and was named a fellow of the Utah State Historical Society in 2014.
George D. Smith is the founder of the Smith-Pettit Foundation. Born in New York to George D. Smith Sr. and Bessie Pettit Smith, he is a graduate of Stanford University and of New York University. Following graduate school, he founded Smith Capital Management and later Smith Research Associates (San Francisco). In 1981, he co-founded Signature Books, which has since published over 600 works in Western American history, religion, and literature.
He is the author or editor of Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Office Journals, 1832–1871(two volumes); An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton; Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History; Religion, Feminism, and Freedom of Conscience: A Mormon-Humanist Dialogue; Nauvoo Polygamy: “…But We Called It Celestial Marriage,” and Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Office Journals, 1832-1871, in addition to essays published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Free Inquiry, the Journal of the John Whitmer Historical Association, the Journal of Mormon History, and Sunstone.
He has served on the boards of the Commonwealth Club of California, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, the Kenyon Review, the Leakey Foundation, and National Public Radio, and has acted as elections monitor for the Carter Center in China and Central America, and for women’s advocacy in Africa. In 2016, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities from the University of Utah for his influence in, and contributions to, the publishing industry.