New BYU-Hawaii communications and media professor from Las Vegas, Nevada, Dr. Mason Allred, shared his journey from being a BYUH student to moving to Germany for his dissertation. From his family’s experiences in Germany, he said they were able to grow closer through the language.
“The fact that I’m here now, I’m so grateful and happy it worked out this way. I felt and knew back then and even now, that this is where I am supposed to be.” Allred expressed, “When you feel it, you know you just have to go for it.”
He emphasized he hopes as a professor, he can help students recognize how special the university is, have a respect for the land, and be a part of the island itself. Allred said, “It’s part of your education to culturally connect with this island and realize why it’s so beautiful even with the troubled history. I hope students do that and enjoy and connect their education in the here and now.”
Allred explained his interest in communication. “I was always interested in different ways of expressing ideas and messages through what we call mediation, putting it into ways that can be shared.”
He also shared his fascination with ways to communicate visually. “I was really drawn to visual culture and ways of putting ideas into films, posters, or comic books. I just really liked the visual rhetoric of making meaning in visual signs.”
In regard of being part of BYUH, Allred, said, “I’ve always known that I wanted to come here. It’s been a rite of passage. My mom is Hawaiian and she’s originally from this island. She grew up in Honolulu and Kailua. We would always come back to go to school here and get in touch with the land.”
Reminiscing about his experiences at BYUH before being hired as a professor, Allred shared, “I remember at one point helping out at the TVA farm. We were harvesting papaya and kalo, and I just had this spiritual experience from getting my hands and knees in the dirt.
“I felt through my body that there was a connection here and this was home to me. That experience was powerful enough that I wanted to be here.
“My hope was always that somehow, sometime, in some way, I would come back and teach here. I didn’t know if that would ever work out, but it was my hope.”
Growing Up
“I remember as a kid loving movies and always wanting to go to the theater,” Allred recounted. He said as a child he was inspired by Tim Burton’s “Batman.” “It wasn’t until later that I realized a lot of what was visually going on was from expressions of a German film.
“All the architecture was coming from these buildings in Germany from the 1920s. Those kinds of stylistic and media connections came together for me. There was already something about film and media that I loved. And the German language was happening from middle school on. It just kind of came together in my studies here [at BYUH].
“There was something about it visually, about Tim Burton’s touch. It was around the time that “Edward Scissorhands” came out. It resonated with me.”
Life as a BYU-Hawaii Student
Looking back to when he was a BYUH student, Allred explained he had started gaining the tools to pick apart and understand how media works. He noted, “On one side you could design things, and on the other, you could see it be kind of critical, push you in certain directions, and make choices.”
A lot of his own work focuses on film, how it functions in society, and how it influences certain ways of thinking and being. Allred described, “Those interests brought me to want to teach in that realm too.”
On a personal ‘holokai,’ Allred recounted his journey as a BYUH undergraduate with research, history, cultural anthropology and communication.
Prior to attendance at BYUH, Allred served a mission in Frankfurt, Germany. Before serving in Germany, Allred had a background with German language and culture.
Allred explained, “When I was in eighth grade, I had the option to take a foreign language. My choices were French, Spanish, or German. For some reason, I felt the urge to take German.
“When I was in Yifen Beus’ class, we watched ‘The Cabinet of Caligari,’ an old German expression film. It blew my mind.
“Then, I realized I know German fluently. But there were elements of German history and culture that I just don’t know. By the time I applied for graduate school, my application was a paper of these German films from the 1920s. I wanted to work on them more.
“I brought the experience and language from my mission, some of the exposure I had from movies here, and I put them into the application,” explained Allred thoughtfully.
From Allred’s experience at BYUH, he said he gained the theoretical port that prepared him for graduate school.
Allred completed his master’s degree in one year from the University of California, Berkeley. “I knew when I went to graduate school, I really wanted to look at history and media and how they functioned. I felt like I showed up with a great education from [BYUH].”
Doctorate Pursuits
After receiving a Fulbright Grant, Allred moved to Berlin, Germany to do research related to his dissertation at the Freie Universitat Berlin.
“When I got the Fulbright Grant, I was able to take my family. My kids were able to learn German, so they speak it too. Now, it’s kind of more like our fun family language, so we speak German at home for the most part.
“It’s a family connection we have. And I realized the girls would watch old German movies with me sometimes.”
When his family moved to Berlin, Allred said, “I felt like it allowed me to have this kind of balance of being a scholar, and then being a dad when I come home. Having my family learn the German language was a help because they can see these things, so I think it was a really great and positive thing for us.
“I’ve been very convinced that learning a second, third, or fourth language on a neurological level is great. It shapes your mind in ways because you are forced to see the world from other people’s language. I really wanted that for them. I think German is so good for thinking deep thoughts, philosophy and theory.
“We have so many great memories in Germany,” Allred shared. He said his family has returned for visits welcomed by friends in Germany.
Allred also knows Hebrew and Yiddish languages. A current project Allred said he is working on is his book, “Spiritual Technologies: An Archaeology of Mormon Media.” He said he had additionally has published “Weimar Cinema, Embodiment, and Historicity: Cultural Memory and the Historical Films of Ernst Lubitsch” (Routledge Focus on Film Studies). A history of Joseph Smith papers, he said, has also been researched and conducted by him.
Writer: Geena DeMaio