David Yamane was raised in California and received his bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and his M.S. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He came to Wake Forest from the University of Notre Dame, where he taught for five years, and the University of Virginia, where he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center on Religion and Democracy in 2002-2003. He lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Megan Polzer, and their three children, Paul (b. 1995), Hannah (b. 1997), and Mark (b. 2000)

Professor Yamane’s primary teaching interests include introduction to sociology, classical theory, and various aspects of the sociology of religion. He also maintains more than a passing interest in contemporary theory, culture, education, and race/ethnic studies. His contributions to teaching scholarship include publishing in and serving on the editorial board of the professional journal Teaching Sociology, and editing the instructor’s manual for the fourth edition of David Newman’s Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life (Pine Forge Press).

Professor Yamane’s primary scholarly interest is in sociologically understanding organized religion, particularly in the postwar United States. To this end, he recently published two books. The first, The Catholic Church in State Politics: Negotiating Prophetic Demands and Political Realities (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), is a study of the role of conferences of Catholic bishops in state legislative politics. The second, Real Stories of Christian Initiation: Lessons for and from the RCIA (The Liturgical Press, 2006), contains five case studies of the process by which individuals are initiated into the Roman Catholic church.

In addition to his current research, Professor Yamane has also edited and written the introduction to Richard Schoenherr’s posthumous book, Goodbye Father: The Celibate Male Priesthood and the Future of the Catholic Church (Oxford University Press, 2002). A paperback edition of his own first book, Student Movements for Multiculturalism: Challenging the Curricular Color Line in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) was released in November 2002.

In 2005, Professor Yamane assumed the editorship of Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review, the official journal of the Association for the Sociology of Religion.