Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities: Death

This interdisciplinary seminar examines death as a social process and a historical event. The first part focuses on death rituals in a variety of contexts: preparing and disposing of dead bodies, and mourning and commemorating the dead. Key texts address religion, rites of passage, symbolic efficacy, ontologies of personhood, and theologies of the soul. The second part explores the intersections of death with law, the state, and museums: forensic investigations, public commemorations, and curations of funerary objects and human remains, considered as means of public reckoning with death, especially in contexts of war and political violence.