The Initiative in Religious Practices & Practical Theology

dsmote@emory.edu

Areas of Focus:

Evangelical Protestantism in the US South
Japanese Buddhisms
Visual Ethnography
Cultural History
Ancestor Veneration
Religious Spaces and Places

Practices Concentration:

Core Seminar Paper: The Last People on Earth to Let You Down: Religious Practices of Women Funeral Directors in Metro Atlanta

Experiential Requirement: A Miyoshi Obon

Biography

D. S. Mote is a visual ethnographer of religious cultures and religious practices. Trained in ethnography, visual anthropology, and cultural history, she is currently at work on a film about the religious culture of Shingleroof Camp Meeting in Henry County, Georgia, which is the focus of her PhD dissertation. Before beginning doctoral work at Emory, she worked in the US as an editor, pastor, and community-college teacher in Kentucky and Tennessee and in Japan as a high school and university teacher in Hiroshima and Shimane prefectures. Much of her current work involves identifying and analyzing (often implicit) practices of ancestor veneration in US contexts by putting them in conversation with more explicit ancestor-venerating practices in non-US religious cultures. Animating much of this work are 1) a focus on the interplay of practices, memory, and place and 2) an interest not only in viewing religious places differently but also in viewing different places as religious.