Haunting Religion
Summary:
A seminar features papers by Lisa Bitel on otherworlds of the Middle Ages and Tok Thompson on western and Native American perspectives of animal spirits.
Description:
Tok Thompson, associate professor of anthropology, presents a paper on "Animal Spirits: A Comparative View of Western and Native American Traditions." Prof. Thompson came to USC, where he has been teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in folklore and related topics. Additionally, he has taught folklore as a visiting professor at universities in Northern Ireland, Iceland, and most recently, Ethiopia.
Professor Lisa Bitel's lecture is titled "Otherworlds of the Earliest Middle Ages." Bitel studies the social, cultural, and religious history of medieval Europe. She has written four books about religion and/or gender in early medieval Europe, one book about religion in contemporary California, and published articles about sex, dreams, architecture, and Christianity, among other topics. She is currently researching a book on the material history of the unseen in medieval Europe.
Haunting Religion is organized by Lisa Bitel, professor of history and religion and Lynn Swartz Dodd, director of the Archaeology Research Center at USC. The seminars focus on religious conceptions of, and responses to, the dead, the paranormal, the supernatural, and the otherworldly.
The event is open to the public, but please reserve your seat via this link: http://bit.ly/Ub0zGC.
Photograph: "Filippo Lippi. Spoleto Cathedral, Italy" by Mirari Erdoiza