Seeing Things

Mason Kamana Allred is assistant professor of communication, media, and culture at Brigham Young University-Hawaii.
For more information about Mason Kamana Allred, visit the Author Page.

"Allred articulates in this ambitious entry some fascinating connections between Latter-day Saint theology, technology, and identity formation . . . . Deeply conversant in critical theory, the author establishes inventive arguments supported by examples that convincingly show the range of media’s power to change culture. Scholars of religion or media will find much to consider."—Publishers Weekly

“Getting a better look at how everyday Mormons navigated the shifting landscape of belief in a disenchanted world is a highlight of this book. . . . Allred teaches his readers about art’s entanglement in this arena.”—Journal of the American Academy of Religion

“Historians will find much to love in Seeing Things. . . . Mason Allred has produced an impressive demonstration of how religion, culture, and media have intersected in dynamic and revealing ways across the evolution of one of America’s most significant societal forces.”—Southwestern Historical Quarterly

“Seeing Things is an engaging text that sits at the crossroads of several fields. . . . Allred provides readers with a robust addition to both media and religious studies that hints at the academic potential that lies behind cross-disciplinary studies.”—Reading Religion

"American Mormonism is a religion of seers. What does it mean to see things? Mason Kamana Allred answers: it means to speculate by media, and the media of Mormonism help its practitioners to see at distances, over space and far back into time, beyond death into the everyday here and now. Seeing Things, with its lively pen and gift for bringing forth hidden treasures from the archives, serves both as the pioneering Mormon media history and as spectacles for seeing beyond."—John Durham Peters, Yale University

"Written with a sensitive eye to religious history, national politics, and the surprising liveliness of things and the dead, Allred offers a fascinating account of links between spirit and machine in Mormon history. The book deftly interweaves scholarship on lived religion, media theory, and new materialism. It will reward readers in media studies and religious studies, inviting them to reconsider the mysteries of technology and the technicity of vision, spiritual and otherwise."—Jenna Supp-Montgomerie, University of Iowa