The End of Life and What Comes Next: Session 1

An urn with the conference title and dates
March 31, 2022
11:30AM - 1:00PM
Thompson Library 165 or via Zoom

Date Range
2022-03-31 11:30:00 2022-03-31 13:00:00 The End of Life and What Comes Next: Session 1 Jessey Choo, Associate Professor of Chinese History and Religion, Rutgers University“The Loquacious Dead: Burial and Agency in Late Medieval Chinese Entombed Epitaphs” Abstract: Late medieval Chinese entombed epitaphs are stone slabs interred with the deceased, inscribed with information about the tomb occupant's genealogy, life and death, burial details, and a eulogistic closing elegy. Thousands have been excavated in recent decades. These inscriptions could be quite lengthy, combining mundane information with sometimes colorful accounts of tomb occupant's exploit and debate over how they ought to be buried and remembered. I will focus on the negotiations within and outside grieving families over the burial arrangement and its signification as portrayed in late medieval entombed epitaphs. This talk is, in some ways, a response to Peter Metcalf's seminal work, Celebrations of Death. I feel that contrasting anthropological and historical methodologies and modern and pre-modern responses to death might generate interesting discussions. Peter Metcalf, Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, University of Virginia“Watching Death: an Ethnographic Encounter” Abstract: Once while I was doing anthropological fieldwork in Borneo, I spent a Christmas watching an old woman with advanced TB cough herself to death. For my hosts I was only doing the proper thing; no one in the longhouse dies alone. But my motives were not sentimental. I wanted to see first hand the rites that occurred right after death, and they are striking. The corpse is talked to incessantly, carried into the kitchen and force fed—and that is only the beginning. What is inescapable is that those people die a death different to any we know in the west.Peter Metcalf is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia. He has conducted fieldwork in Borneo over many years. He studied first at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and then at Harvard. He has also taught at the Universities of Papua-New Guinea and Singapore. He is author of several books including Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual.For event updates, please continue to monitor this page.All events sponsored by the CSR are free and open to the public.The Zoom livestream of this event will be presented with automated closed captions. If you wish to request traditional CART services or other accommodations, please contact religion@osu.edu. Requests made by about 10 days before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.Effective 08/02/2021, students, faculty, staff and visitors to all Ohio State campuses and medical facilities are required to wear masks indoors, regardless of their vaccination status. Masks continue to be required outdoors for unvaccinated individuals when they cannot maintain physical distancing. Fully vaccinated people are not required to mask outdoors. Thompson Library 165 or via Zoom America/New_York public

Jessey Choo, Associate Professor of Chinese History and Religion, Rutgers University

“The Loquacious Dead: Burial and Agency in Late Medieval Chinese Entombed Epitaphs”

Choo headshot

Abstract: Late medieval Chinese entombed epitaphs are stone slabs interred with the deceased, inscribed with information about the tomb occupant's genealogy, life and death, burial details, and a eulogistic closing elegy. Thousands have been excavated in recent decades. These inscriptions could be quite lengthy, combining mundane information with sometimes colorful accounts of tomb occupant's exploit and debate over how they ought to be buried and remembered. I will focus on the negotiations within and outside grieving families over the burial arrangement and its signification as portrayed in late medieval entombed epitaphs. This talk is, in some ways, a response to Peter Metcalf's seminal work, Celebrations of Death. I feel that contrasting anthropological and historical methodologies and modern and pre-modern responses to death might generate interesting discussions. 


Peter Metcalf, Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, University of Virginia

“Watching Death: an Ethnographic Encounter”

Metcalf headshot

Abstract: Once while I was doing anthropological fieldwork in Borneo, I spent a Christmas watching an old woman with advanced TB cough herself to death. For my hosts I was only doing the proper thing; no one in the longhouse dies alone. But my motives were not sentimental. I wanted to see first hand the rites that occurred right after death, and they are striking. The corpse is talked to incessantly, carried into the kitchen and force fed—and that is only the beginning. What is inescapable is that those people die a death different to any we know in the west.

Peter Metcalf is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia. He has conducted fieldwork in Borneo over many years. He studied first at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and then at Harvard. He has also taught at the Universities of Papua-New Guinea and Singapore. He is author of several books including Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual.

For event updates, please continue to monitor this page.


All events sponsored by the CSR are free and open to the public.

The Zoom livestream of this event will be presented with automated closed captions. If you wish to request traditional CART services or other accommodations, please contact religion@osu.edu. Requests made by about 10 days before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

Effective 08/02/2021, students, faculty, staff and visitors to all Ohio State campuses and medical facilities are required to wear masks indoors, regardless of their vaccination status. Masks continue to be required outdoors for unvaccinated individuals when they cannot maintain physical distancing. Fully vaccinated people are not required to mask outdoors.