AP/ANTH 1130 6.00 Anthropology of the Living and the Dead
How do the living relate to the dead? Covering topics from ancient burial rites to contemporary zombie lore, this course examines how people in cultures around the world – past and present – create, maintain, and renegotiate complex relationships between the living and the dead. The course introduces key concepts in anthropology, particularly in archaeology and medical anthropology, through which we explore how culture shapes the meaning of life, death, and states in between.
A wide range of topics will be covered, including: past and present funerary and commemorative rites; our engagement with people from the archaeological past (e.g. mummies, bog bodies, and ancient skeletons); cross-cultural ideas about supernatural beings in liminal zones (e.g. ghosts and vampires); the dead on display (in museums, science centers, religious shrines); the political lives of dead bodies; immortal cells in biomedicine; organ transplantation; notions of the afterlife; theories of reincarnation; the search for immortality (cryonics, cloning, uploading); justice for the dead (forensic anthropology); and, of course, zombies and their revenant friends.
Throughout the course, we introduce and employ anthropological thinking, which emphasizes cross-cultural comparisons, holistic views of culture, ethnographic and archaeological observations, deeptime, embodied experience, and emic perspectives.
Course Director (Fall/Winter 24-25): Fall 2024 – E. Yasui (eyasui@yorku.ca); Winter 2025 – TBD
Course Director (Winter 2025): E. Yasui – eyasui@yorku.ca