David Yamane

David Yamane earned his BA (’91) in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and his MS (’94) and Ph.D. (’98) in sociology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. After teaching at the University of Notre Dame and holding a post-doc at the University of Virginia’s Center on Religion and Democracy, he joined the sociology faculty at Wake Forest in 2005. He served as department chair from 2009 to 2011 and is currently an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Religion and School of Divinity.

For the first 20 years of his academic career, Professor Yamane specialized in the sociology of religion, a field in which he authored, co-authored or edited 6 books and 2 major scholarly journals.

Since 2011, Professor Yamane has studied guns, especially the new self-defense-oriented core of American gun culture that Michael Bane calls Gun Culture 2.0. Among his publications in this area is a short history of concealed carry in the US, Concealed Carry Revolution: Liberalizing the Right to Bear Arms in America, and a review essay on “The Sociology of US Gun Culture.”

As he continues to work on a book combining his personal experiences and sociological observations of Gun Culture 2.0, Professor Yamane shares his thoughts on two blogs, gunculture2point0.com and guncurious.com, and on Twitter at @davidyamane and @gunculture2pt0.

In 2022, he launched a YouTube channel, “Light Over Heat with Professor David Yamane,” on which he posts weekly short videos about issues related to his scholarship.

Professional headshots and a full biography are available on Professor Yamane’s personal website davidyamane.com.