Seeing Things: Technologies of Vision and the Making of Mormonism

Author/Contributor(s):	Allred, Mason Kamana
Publisher:	University of North Carolina Press
Date:	03/28/2023
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

"Blending methods of cultural history, religious studies, and media studies, Mason Allred unearths the ways Mormons employed technologies to translate events, beliefs, anxieties, and hopes into reproducible experiences and the growth of their religious system of meaning. By arraying and analyzing technologies intimately commingled with Mormonism's historical development, the book offers a provocative reevaluation of Mormonism's doctrinal focus on materiality and embodiment. While Mormon uses of television and the internet are recent examples of the tradition's use of technology, Allred also attends to neglected and now forgotten technologies that Mormons used for negotiating the spirit, such as panorama displays and magic lantern shows. Allred offers a 'media archaeology' connecting such 'dead' technologies and practices with the present, arguing that Mormons' communion with God and fellow humans was regularly accomplished through these kinds of mediation"--