REL 209 Sacred and Scared: Strange Tales and Popular Religions in East Asia

Exploring the rich tradition of ghost stories and fantasy tales of the oddities (zhiguai) in East Asia, this course provides a comprehensive overview of folk religions and cultic practices in China, Taiwan, and Japan. Intensively reading zhiguai stories and relevant modern scholarship, students consider and compare Eastern and Western conceptions of self and other, body and soul(s), death and afterlife, and better understand the popular culture, folklore, and religious secularism and syncretism in East Asia. [GM1, H]

Instructor

Ma