REL 373
Religion, Death, and Society
Buddha at Death, Burmese marble sculpture, 18th/19th c.
Dr. Kurtis Schaeffer
e-mail: kschaeff@bama.ua.edu
Course
syllabus (PDF)
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Course books (click the cover to go to each publisher's site):
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Phillipe Ariès.
Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). ISBN: 0801817625
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Peter Brown.
The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function
in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
ISBN: 0226076229
(Electronic version available from
Gorgas Library website.)
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Patrick J. Geary.
Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages.
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990). ISBN: 0691008620
(Electronic version available from
Gorgas Library website.)
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Tomás Eloy Martínez.
Santa Evita
(New York: Vintage International, 1997). ISBN: 0679768149
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Peter Metcalf, Richard Huntington.
Celebrations of Death:
The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual
(Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). ISBN: 0521423759
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John S. Strong.
Relics of the Buddha
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). ISBN: 0691117640
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Katherine Verdery.
The Political Lives of Dead Bodies : Reburial and Postsocialist
Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). ISBN: 0231112300
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The dead play a crucial role in the lives of the living.
Elaborate systems of ritual, doctrine, symbol, and practice integrate
them into society. In this seminar we will study one aspect of the
social life of the dead- the practice of preserving and commemorating
the human corpse.
We will compare:
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Cults of Christian saints in late antiquity with the political
lives of dead bodies in eastern europe
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The dead and cremation of the Buddha with the theft of saintly
corpses in Medieval Europe.
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Death and burial practices in nineteenth century New England
with those of Himalayan buddhists.
While ranging over a variety of times, places, and traditions,
we will focus on the shared ways in which bodies of the dead form
crucial elements in the social life of the living.
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Readings:
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Western Attitudes Toward Death, Chapter One (PDF)
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Western Attitudes Toward Death, Chapter Two (PDF)
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Western Attitudes Toward Death, Chapter Three (PDF)
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Western Attitudes Toward Death, Chapter Four (PDF)
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Death and the Right Hand, by Robert Hertz (PDF)
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