My first two academicky publications are in print now!
I’m the *second author on Maturing and Enduring: Dialogue and Its Readers after Forty Years in the Winter 2006 issue of Dialogue, for my help in collecting and processing the survey data. The data shows that the Dialogue’s subscription based has aged by two decades in as many years. In our panel presentation at Sunstone last summer, I spoke as a representative of the younger generation of Mormon intellectuals and suggested that we were getting our brains stimulated elsewhere (e.g., on the web). There really seems to be a generational divide in this community.
My article, Saving the Dead: A Comparative Study of Post-Funerary Rites in Japanese and Mormon Culture is one of the features in the November 2006 issue of Sunstone. It looks like they made the PDF version of the article available online. If you read it, please let me know what you think. The title’s dry, but I think it’s a fun comparison of how two very different cultures get along with their deceased.
This should provide me with motivation to get through the last week of the semester…
*Much gratitude to Armand Mauss for his mentorship.  Taihen osewa sama desu! 
9 responses so far ↓
1 Mark G. // Dec 13, 2006 at 12:04 am
Very cool and congrats! I just got this month’s Sunstone in the mail today and saw your article. I’m going to read it tomorrow morning on my flight to Oahu. I hope you stay in the Mormon community for a long time- hopefully I’ll be able to see you at the Sunstone Symposium once again this year. Thanks for the work you’ve been doing- you have a unique perspective and voice to share with us.
2 Dave Sigmann // Dec 13, 2006 at 8:04 am
Congrats!
3 Elise // Dec 13, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Congrats! I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the newest issue of Sunstone. Quite unfortunately, I will not be on a plane to Oahu when I read it. But I will still let you know how much I like it after I finish!
4 pilgrimgirl // Dec 13, 2006 at 6:20 pm
I’ve congratulated John in my own special way already, but let me add my cyber ‘high five’ here. Good work love!!
5 Joe // Dec 14, 2006 at 5:38 am
Congrats bro!
6 Matt Thurston // Dec 15, 2006 at 3:43 pm
I have both issues of Sunstone and Dialogue on my bedside drawer and look forward to reading both articles.
7 John // Dec 16, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Welcome back, Matt, we’ve missed you.
It’s dry stuff, I tell you. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
8 Miko // Dec 17, 2006 at 7:56 am
Just finished reading it! Great stuff! I think the contrast of different societies’ reactions toward death is fascinating. And in this case it was two that I know just enough about to be dangerous and not enough to really discuss…until now! I’m trying to decide whether the time or the place makes more sense to me. I really do sympathize with the feeling that some places are just sacred (and therefore closer to that “other”, the answer to the death question), but at the same time, neither place nor time should really matter to a dead person. I think that the grieving process’ alleviation is an important factor in both sets of rites and find it fascinating that we don’t have more such rituals; especially since most societies are obsessed with death and yet have no answer for it.
Do you have a family altar at home? I like this sense that our loved ones, regardless of distance and/or state of being are always close to us. Pagan Hallowe’en rituals recommend pictures of the deceased and offerings to them. But that’s an annual addition to the family altar. I like the sense of having them close by at all times so that, whever I want to ask my grandma something, or hug my grandpa, I can light the incense and feel that she or he is right here with me, appreciating my actions, possibly benefiting from them. Obviously it’s all an exercise in my own greving process (I still have a good 20 years to work through before my grandpa is really “dead”…I like that, too), but as I always say, “funerals are for the living” and since they so rarely really satisfy all the needs of the greiving living, these on-going (perhaps excessivley) funerary rites seem to have more value than a simple funeral-and-burial.
9 Parker // Dec 20, 2006 at 3:39 pm
John,
I finaly received my copy of Sunstone and read your interesting and well thought out article Saving the Dead. You said (p. 20) “My study of these two ancestor veneration functions . . . .” It is the idea of “ancestor veneration” that was so provocative. I remember how misguided we (LDS) thought the poor pagans were who worshiped their ancestors. They are going to be so dissapointed when they discover all that worship won’t lead to exaltation. Now, I see LDS practice, as you suggested, has a bog does of ancestor worship, and contgrary to what we thought (think) of the “pagans” we believe it has a bearing, as you noted, on ones exaltation (Mormons really don’t have a theology of salvation). If you step back and observe LDS meetings and the frequency that “family” is endorsed, praised, and glorified and how much we excult in our “families are forever” concept, you (or at least I) have to say that we don’t just value family, we worship family. It is a theme that I am trying to work out (lots of notes so far), but I also think there is a rich comparison that can yet be explored on “ancestor veneration.”
Congratulations. Parker
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