Dana Mirsalis
Japanese religion, history, gender, pedagogy
About Me
Historian, ethnographer, pedagogy nerd.
Research and Presentations
Publications, presentations, and other research activities.
Teaching and Pedagogy
Pedagogy workshops, teaching resources, and other things I've done to help people learn better.
Research and Presentations
Publications
Mirsalis, Dana. “Gender.” In The New Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions, edited by Matthew D. McMullen and Jolyon Baraka Thomas, 467-469. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2024.Mirsalis, Dana. “Blood and Logistics: Female Shinto Priests Negotiating Menstrual Pollution.” Japanese Religions 46, issue 1 (2024), 161-188. (Open access)Invited Lectures"Making Shinto Work: Female Priests, Local Shrines, and Divergent Practices," Portland State University, February 5, 2025“Jinja Honchō, the Gendered Shinto Priesthood, and Future of Shinto,” Princeton University, March 27, 2024“外国人研究者の立場から女子神職の現状” (The current condition of female priests, from the perspective of a foreign researcher) at Zenkoku Joshi Shinshoku Kyōgikai (National Female Priests Association), July 10, 2023“Two Stories of the Gendered Shinto Priesthood,” Osaka University, June 8, 2022“Gendering the Shinto Priesthood in Postwar Japan,” Georgia Southern University, March 30, 2022"Women as Substitute, Women as Complement: Two Stories on the Gendered Shinto Priesthood in Postwar Japan." Kyushu University, January 22, 2021 (Recording here.)Selected Conference Presentations“Transforming Fieldwork in (Post-)Pandemic Asia” (roundtable chair) at the Association of Asian Studies, March 16, 2024“'Don’t tell headquarters, but–': Exploring the Boundaries of 'Acceptable' Activities at Shrines" at American Academy of Religion, November 20, 2023“Gathering, Spinning, Weaving: Negotiating Entangled Ethnographic Relationships and Commitments” (roundtable panelist) at American Academy of Religion, November 20, 2023“Gendering Religious Labor in Asian Communities” (roundtable panelist) at American Academy of Religion, November 20, 2022“Purified Ground, Polluted Bodies: Gender and Labor in the Shinto Ground Purification Ceremony” at Gendering Labor in Contemporary Asian Religions Workshop, Lund University, June 21, 2022“Precarious Priesthood: What the ‘Part-Time’ Priest Tells Us About Contemporary Shinto” at American Academy of Religion, November 22, 2021"Applying Patchwork Ethnography to Research in Contemporary Japan - A Roundtable on Positionality, Networks, and ‘Piecing Together’ One’s Field" (roundtable) at Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, January 17, 2021“‘What’s the Value of Female Priests?’: Discourses on the Gendered Priesthood in Postwar Shinto” at American Academy of Religion, December 2, 2020“Moving ‘Like Women’: Ritual Technique and the Gendering of the Shinto Priesthood” at American Academy of Religion, November 25, 2019“‘Leveraging Our Special Skills’: Strategic Gender Essentialism in Female Priests’ Self-Evaluation” at Asian Studies Conference Japan, June 29, 2019“女子神職と「普通の女性」—現代神道におけるジェンダー構造” (Female Priests and the “Normal Woman”: Gender Construction in Contemporary Shinto) at Shūkyō to Shakai Gakkai (Japanese Association for the Study of Religion and Society), June 9, 2018“‘Can Female Priests Really Live as Normal Women?’: Gender, Relationality, and Female Shinto Priests” at Nanzan Seminar for the Study of Religion and Culture, January 8, 2018“Myth, Spiritualism, and Psychology: Sources of Legitimacy During Ōmoto’s ‘Chinkon Kishin Boom,’ 1916-1921” at UCLA Japan Studies Graduate Student Conference, October 30, 2015“‘I Am a Woman, But Have the Nature of a Male’: Moving Beyond the Gender Binary in Analyzing the Founders of Japanese New Religious Movements” at Columbia University Graduate Conference on East Asia at Columbia University, February 20, 2015“Mediated Egalitarianism: Sources of Authority in Ōmoto’s ‘Chinkon Kishin Boom’” at Ways of Knowing: Graduate Conference on Religion at Harvard Divinity School, October 25, 2013Public Scholarship and Media Appearances
Beyond Japan episode 24, "Modern Shinto" (available here)
Teaching and Pedagogy
All of these resources are free and open for your use (with attribution). For lesson plans and further teaching resources, feel free to email me.Publications
Mirsalis, Dana. “Transparent and Flexible Teaching for the Inclusive Classroom.” In Teaching Gradually: Practical Pedagogy for Graduate Students, by Graduate Students, edited by Kacie L. Armstrong, Lauren A. Genova, John Wyatt Greenlee, and Derina S. Samuel. Stylus, 2021.Pedagogy ResourcesHow We Are Not Using GenAI in Our Classrooms, with Aimee Wodda, Sang-hyoun Pahk, and Rick Jobs. A 75-minute workshop on refusing generative AI in the classroom.Performance Skills in the Classroom, a two-hour workshop to teach instructors how techniques from theatre (especially improv) can be leveraged in the classroom.Teaching ResourcesPaper Writing Tips and Tricks handout
Let’s try to stop the Tokugawa shogunate from collapsing, a historical roleplay (ABLConnect Prize winner, 2018-2019)
The Spectrum Game, an activity teaching students to compare and contrastPedagogy Instruction and Curriculum DevelopmentBok Pedagogy Fellow, Harvard University, 2021-2022
Duties include: running workshops for graduate students on pedagogy, designing a workshop on accessible education, facilitating a workshop series on course design to promote mental wellness, conducting observations of graduate student sections, and consulting with graduate students about how to improve their teaching.Department Pedagogy Fellow, East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department, Harvard University, 2019-2020
Duties included: teaching the East Asian Languages and Civilizations Teaching Practicum (a pedagogy seminar for graduate students) in fall 2019, conducting observations of graduate student sections, and consulting with graduate students about how to improve their teachingCurriculum development, fall 2012, Harvard University
Animated Spirituality (undergraduate course on Japanese religion and popular culture)Teaching experienceAs course head:
• Modern Japanese Religion, Pacific University
• First Year Communities, Pacific University
• Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan, Pacific University
• Making of Modern China, Pacific University
• First Year Seminar, Pacific University
• History of Modern Japan, Pacific University
• East Asian Civilization, Pacific University
• Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire, Pacific University
• History of the Pacific World, Pacific University
• East Asian Languages and Civilizations Teaching Practicum, Harvard UniversityAs teaching assistant:
• Care in Critical Times, Harvard University
• East Asian Religions: Traditions and Transformations, Harvard University
• Japan in Asia and the World, Harvard University
• Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory, Harvard University
• Elementary Japanese 1-3, Foothill College
About Me
I am a scholar of modern Japanese religion. I'm currently an Assistant Professor in the History department at Pacific University.My master's thesis focused on gender and authority in Ōmoto during their "chinkon kishin boom" of 1916 to 1921. My doctoral dissertation focused on female Shinto priests, specifically how the entrance of women into the Shinto priesthood in 1946 has impacted and intersected with conceptions of gender, labor, Shinto, and nationalism. Some overarching goals that guide my research include writing gender history that moves beyond the gender binary and empathetically (but critically) discussing the ways that marginalized people reinterpret dominant narratives to create spaces for themselves without necessarily challenging the logic of their marginalization. I use mixed archival and ethnographic methods to explore the stories and experiences that might be left out of the "official"/institutional record.I received both my MA and PhD from Harvard University. I've previously been a research and training student at Nanzan University on a Fulbright Fellows grant and a visiting fellow at Kokugakuin University on a Fulbright Graduate Research grant. I have conducted fieldwork in Shinto shrines, priest training courses, and with priest-affiliated organizations, as well as interviews with Shinto priests, parishioners, and instructors.I also have an enthusiasm for teaching and pedagogy, especially addressing issues of accessibility and equity. See my teaching page for more information.I am available for guest lectures on Japanese religion, Japanese history, and ethnographic methods via Zoom or Skype. If you are a junior scholar, please feel free to reach out if I might be able to help you with something!
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