This lecture discusses five flags which the Latter-Day Saints used from 1830 to 1848 in various parts of the United States to represent their early allegiances to God and to the United States. Despite the many problems in the relationship between the Latter-Day Saints and the American government at this time and in the decades to come, the Mormons clearly attempted to show that they could be loyal to both their faith and the political authority.

Recent research has questioned whether the Grand Union flag (a.k.a. “Continental Colors”) really flew at Prospect Hill, Boston, on 1 January 1776. Eye­witness accounts use the term “union flag” and a new interpretation theorizes this to have referred specifically to the British Union Jack and not the characteristic “union flag with 13 red-and-white stripes.” This paper rebuts the new interpretation and supports the conventional history through an examination of eighteenth-century linguistic standards, contextual historical trends, and additional primary and secondary sources.

Covering a little-known subject, this article catalogues the use of flags within slave uprisings in the New World in the nineteenth century. The author demonstrates how the slave banners were typically modelled on the flags of their former masters but also often incorporated African symbols in an attempt to indicate physical freedom as well as the attempt to signal the former slave groups’ equality with their former oppressors.

This Driver Award-winning paper examines the use of vexillidolatry—the reverence of flags—in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). The author demonstrates the deeply-held reverence to DPRK flags—national, political, and military—which North Koreans hold. This is not the result of political pressure, but more the result of the people’s view of the national flag as a symbol of independence and their strong and widely-displayed patriotism.

This essay conveys the story of the first mass recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in Utah. The author demonstrates how the event was intended to demonstrate to the rest of the country that Mormans in Utah were loyal Americans.

This paper uses communication theory to study the flag culture of Tennessee. The author applies concepts such as semiotics, pragmatic unity, and visual synecdoche to the examination of flags and flag-derived logos used throughout the Volunteer State.

This article provides a discussion of the Znamia Pobedy — the Soviet Banner of Victory from World War II — covering the sometimes contradictory stories behind the flag raised by Soviet soldiers over the Reichstag in Berlin. It also discusses post-war use in the U.S.S.R. and the countries of the former Soviet Union.

This article provides a discussion of the flags of the Confederacy, illustrated by historical flags of the period. The author discusses how one flag pattern gained primacy in the South during the Civil War, and how that flag is viewed in contemporary U.S. culture.

This compelling essay describes the author’s own relationship with flags over a lifetime of engagement and study. This volume of the journal is dedicated to his memory.

When five white high school students in Morgan Hill, California, flouted a school policy against wearing flag-themed clothing, which had been aimed at reducing tensions on the day celebrating Mexican pride, the media firestorm decrying their treatment roiled the political airwaves.

As Utah prepared to celebrate its long-awaited entry into the Union in 1896, locals sewed and displayed from the ceiling of the Mormon Tabernacle the largest flag ever made, a record which stood for 27 years and continued a tradition of large flags in Utah. This paper won the Driver Award in 2010.

Thomas A. Sebeok (1920-2001), a leading semiotician, developed a useful typology which the author uses to analyze national and subnational flags, exploring them as signals, icons, indexes, and symbols and using extensively illustrations.

A newly-developed flag displayed by avid Russian sports fans in support of their national teams marks a change in the use of the bear symbol—first only used by outsiders to represent Russia but now claimed by Russians as their own.