Part of every Honors student’s required coursework is HON 104: Religious Worldviews and Ethical Perspectives. DePaul’s Vincentian heritage and its role as the country’s largest Catholic institution necessitates that its students engage with diverse religious perspectives and think critically about how cultures around the world develop and communicate value systems, which Honors also seeks to uphold in its HON 104 offerings.
Four years ago, as an Honors freshman, I was fortunate enough to take Dr. Yuki Miyamoto’s HON 104 class titled “In the Realm of Religion and Politics”. As a freshman I found Professor Miyamoto’s course, which discussed the consequences of enforced secularity and the ways in which national identity behaves as a type of religion, to be incredibly thought-provoking and perhaps one of the most critical classes in shaping my perspective as a young academic. As someone for whom religion was never a fundamental part of home or community life, but who nonetheless came of age in a post-9/11 America that so often fanned the flames of religious persecution, HON 104 was the first time that I truly considered the ways that religion shapes the identity of a nation built on the promise of secularism. Professor Miyamoto will be teaching the class again this spring for the first time in four years. Needless to say, the topic feels much renewed.
In addition to HON 104, Dr. Miyamoto also teaches the HON 350 Senior Seminar titled “The Atomic Age”. An ethicist and second-generation survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima, Dr. Miyamoto focuses much of her research on nuclear warfare and how nuclear armaments impact cultures and the environment. Considering current anxieties surrounding ongoing global conflicts, and popular culture’s recent spotlight on the atomic bomb in the Academy Award-winning Oppenheimer, I decided to reach out to the professor to hear her thoughts.
Can you share with us a little about your academic background and your areas of focus?
My expertise is in ethics. I mainly teach nuclear ethics and environmental ethics, and my approach is more like narrative analysis, looking into not necessarily the texts, but movies or novels or even phenomena—popular discourse. In other words, I’m not teaching “This is right. This is wrong,” but more, “What is considered as right and on what ground?” In my field, it’s more like epistemic injustice or epistemic violence.
You taught a class about the atomic age for Honors in the past. Have the escalating conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East influenced discourse in your area of study?
Actually, I am also very critical about the rhetoric around how nuclear issues are framed. We are still working within Cold War rhetoric, which is, you know, “Some rogue nations or some bad ones have nuclear weapons, and what will happen?” We are always living under the shadow of nuclear weapons, and I identify that rhetoric with the Cold War. My critique is, do you know how many times the U. S. conducted [a nuclear] test? It’s 1,032 nuclear tests and 67 hydrogen bombs, which are exceedingly more powerful than that in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. And of course, people are living [at test sites]; we have the Nevada proving sites, and the plume spreads all over the United States and even beyond. I mean, it’s happened already. Those many bombs have already been detonated. It’s always good to pay attention to the threat of nuclear weapons, but I’m very much against the way it is framed.
Would you say that recent conversations or concerns over climate change and global warming have changed the conversation around nuclear energy and warfare?
I think that’s something we have to make connections [to] because when we talk about nuclear weapons, as I said, the Cold War rhetoric is so persistent. 67 nuclear weapons were detonated in the Marshall Islands [a U.S. possession until 1986]. So, people had to evacuate, they came back, they were falling ill, and they re-evacuated. After the nuclear tests, we gathered together the nuclear waste and put it under a concrete dome. But the thing is, it’s cracking because radiation often deteriorates concrete, penetrates concrete, and makes it very vulnerable . And on top of that, because of climate change, [the dome] can submerge under the water at any time.
I think the biggest issue is nuclear waste. We still don’t know how to deal with the nuclear waste. I think that’s why most of the nuclear waste in the United States goes to New Mexico. It’s out of sight. Japan is also planning to send its nuclear waste to New Mexico. New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the United States and I think because of that, it has all the nuclear production, the uranium mines. And of course, uranium mines produce lots of radioactive materials. Having nuclear weapons, having nuclear power, forces people to be exposed to radiation.
Thinking about what you said about the rhetoric around nuclear warfare, I’m curious if you think the film Oppenheimer is maybe reengaging the conversation?
Are you familiar with “Barbenheimer”? That meme was a little disconcerting to me. The film says–when they were trying to create the atomic bomb–the film refers to the bomb as a weapon of mass destruction and as a weapon of genocide. Have we ever created this kind of meme about another genocide, or have we ever glorified a person who created a weapon of genocide? You know, there are many high schools that set up Barbenheimer as a theme for Spirit Day. It’s not necessarily making fun of the historical event itself, but it’s just how lightly things are used. It’s just an interesting phenomenon.
As an Honors professor you also teach HON 104: Religious Worldviews and Ethical Perspectives. I remember from your class that it deals specifically with religion and its intersections with violence. How do you think the class will change in response to what’s been happening in the Middle East?
I’m just in the process of thinking how I can change the content, reflecting on what you are talking about. But there are double standards, which I was always touching upon in my 104 class. For example, freedom of expression is consecrated in the Western world, right? That’s why there is a cartoon of the prophet [in reference to caricatures in the French publication, Charlie Hebdo].Muslim people appeal to the European Court of Human Rights saying that these cartoons are a moral injury, but then the court says no, that this is about religion and not about race, so we are not taking it up. Well, for one, Muslim Europeans are highly racialized. The largest Muslim population is found in Indonesia, but in the media or in caricatures, Muslims are always depicted as Middle Eastern. That kind of racialization was dismissed in court. And two, actually this European Court of Human Rights has precedence, having taken up religious issues. They have banned a movie which is offensive to Christians. [In 1994, the court permitted the Austrian government’s banning of the film Das Liebeskonzil due to its perceived insult to the Christian religion.]
So here protecting Christian feelings is overriding freedom of expression. But then when it comes to Muslims, their feelings are totally dismissed. And freedom of expression is such a sacred thing. So that kind of double standard is necessary to show right now, I think.
I remember in our class we also talked about the idea of American nationalism as a kind of religion and obviously, because that was in 2020, we were talking about it in reference to the election. Four years later, we’re kind of at the same place, obviously a different time, but the same kind of situation. Is there a new context behind that idea?
I’m going to talk about this idea of a civil religion. People don’t necessarily take it as religion, but it’s actually very much either rooted in religious dogma or characteristically religious.
Going back to the cartoon incident, you know, the prophet is depicted in a kind of cartoonish way in Europe, right? We fail to see what’s sacred in that culture, but we are so blind to what we uphold as sacred. It’s not like we always prioritize freedom of expression. There are certain things we don’t do, like making fun of fallen soldiers, for example, or burning the national flag, which is actually a piece of fabric, but we read a lot into it. I am definitely going to talk about that intersection of religion and politics, especially in commemoration.
What are you most excited for in this upcoming quarter?
I always teach what I like. So [HON 104] is, of course, one of my favorite classes. I’m very much looking forward to it. But because it’s been a while, I’m also curious about how the new students will react to some of the similar texts or the same texts. And also, I am resuming the short-term study abroad program [to Hiroshima and Nagasaki]. I was planning to do that in 2020, and since then I was not able to restore it. But finally I decided I’m going this winter, so I’m excited about recruiting some students as well.
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