REL 4650 Ghosts, Demons & Ancestors in Asian Religions
This course focuses on beliefs, practices, and rituals concerning spirits, ghosts, demons, ancestors, and the deified dead in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim traditions of South and Southeast Asia. Together we will explore religious and cultural practices associated with death and funeral rites as well as rituals variously designed to pacify, feed, commemorate, communicate with, install, or expel spirits of many sorts in countries as diverse as India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, and Vietnam. In examining ceremonies led by priests, shamans, and healers we will ask why those who die untimely deaths (e.g., accidents, suicide) are more likely to become ghosts and demons; consider instances where spirits of the deceased may afflict or bless the living; and interrogate the relationship between gender and possession. While our primary focus will be on ethnographic sources and anthropological methodologies, we will also engage the histories of particular places, especially those associated with violence and war as well as interreligious crossing, contact, collaboration, and conflict.
Prerequisite
One course in Religious Studies
Course Types
Asian Studies elective; Interreligious Studies elective
Course Outcomes
- Students will demonstrate familiarity with the historical trajectories, key categories, and the interrelated development of the South and Southeast Asian religions under consideration.
- Students will discuss with accuracy and sophistication a range of historical and contemporary beliefs, practices, and rituals related to spirits, ghosts, demons, ancestors, and the deified dead in each of these religious traditions.
- Students will recognize how textual and elite discussions concerning death and the spirits of the deceased may shape and be reshaped by non-elite communities and by innovating practices.
- Students will articulate a research question related to course themes, develop an argument and leverage theoretical sources in response to that question, and craft a research paper that investigates it.