Anthropology of Death and Immortality

ANTHRO 1698 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

This course will explore how different cultures imagine death and the afterlife, drawing on insights from the anthropology of religion, medicine, science, and politics. Based on readings that range from classical ethnographies of death and dying in India, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and Japan to contemporary debates surrounding death in North America and Europe, we will discuss cultural theories on what constitutes the moment of death and what happens after. The topics covered include conceptualizations of the body and mind, ideas of the spirit world, shamanism, witchcraft, mortuary rituals, royal and communist corpses, relic veneration, organ donation, end-of-life care, concepts of biopolitics and bare life, technoscientific immortality, and political lives of dead bodies.