Student Profile

Donna S. Mote

Course of Study:

American Religious Cultures

Year of Entry:

2004

Areas of Focus:

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

Education:

Degree Institution City State Graduation Year
BA Shorter College Rome GA 1986
MDiv The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Louisville KY 1990

Teaching Experience:

Course Title School Role Professor
Introduction to Religion: Buddhist & Christian Practices of Place Emory College Instructor
History of Religions in the US Emory College Teaching Associate Gary Laderman
Interpreting Religion Emory College Teaching Assistant Laurie L. Patton
Baseball and American Culture Emory College Teaching Assistant Dana White and Peter Dowell

Publications:

"Making a Mandala," Practical Matters: A Transdisciplinary Multimedia Journal of Religious Practices and Practical Theology, Issue 1, Spring 2009
"My Intergenerational Self," Families That Work, Fall 2006
"Practicing Hospitality in the Classroom," Language Teaching Ideas, Vol 4, No 4, February 2000

Conference Presentations:

Format Presentation Title Conference Name Conference Date
Film Screening A Miyoshi Obon International Association of Buddhist Studies June 2008
Paper Presentation with Film Clips Bringing Lived Religion to the Teaching of Asian Religions Through Ethnographic Film Southeastern Council on the Study of Religion March 2008
Teaching Methods and Materials Session Bringing Lived Religion to the Teaching of Japanese Buddhisms Through Ethnographic Film Southeastern Conference of the Association of Asian Studies January 2008
Film Screening and Discussion The Practice of Filmmaking in the Study of Japanese Shin Buddhist Religious Practices American Academy of Religion November 2007
Film Screening and Workshop A Miyoshi Obon Ethnographies Without Texts April 2007

Work Experience:

Position / Role Institution City State Dates
Founding Managing Editor Practical Matters: A Transdisciplinary Multimedia Journal of Religious Practices and Practical Theology Atlanta GA September 2007 to July 2009
Graduate Fellow Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life (MARIAL) Atlanta GA August 2004 to present
Principal David English House Hiroshima, Japan 2002-2003
Director David English House Miyoshi, Hiroshima, Japan 1999-2002
Teacher Hiroshima Prefectural University Shobara, Hiroshima, Japan 1998-2002
Teacher Hiroshima Jogakuin University Hiroshima, Japan 1999-2003
Teacher Aishin High School Gotsu, Shimane, Japan 1999-2003
Teacher Hiroshima University Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan 2002-2003
Pastor Shalom Baptist Church Louisville KY 1995-1997
Teacher Roane State Community College Harriman TN 1993-1995
Assistant Editor UMI, Inc Louisville KY 1990-1993
Administrative/Editorial Assistant Center for Women in Ministry Louisville KY 1989-1990

School Community Involvement:

Position / Role Institution City State Dates
Board of Directors The Sabbath House Bryson City NC 1999-present

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

Description:
A Miyoshi Obon (2007) is an ethnographic film about Obon, the Japanese Buddhist Festival of the Dead, as it is observed in rural northern Hiroshima prefecture. The film follows a three-generation family as they commemorate the Hatsubon, or first Obon, since a grandfather???s death. The film privileges the integrity of Obon practices as such (i.e., how people do what they do and where and with whom as well as what they do) and the roles of lay people over those of identified ritual experts in the carrying out of religious practices. The film brings the voices and bodily experiences of children into the ethnography and highlights the reading/use of texts as an embodied religious practice. A Miyoshi Obon suggests that the labor- and time-intensive preparations for the three-day interval of Obon as well as the family gatherings and intergenerational practices performed during the festival are as much religious practices as the explicit veneration rites of 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.