Exorcism Death and the Misrepresentation of Korean Shamans
Dr.Laurel Kendall, American Museum of Natural History
28 March
Lunch Discussion at noon
Woods Hall 115 LOCATION CHANGED TO
MORTAR BOARD ROOM, FERGUSON CENTER 300
Sign up for the free lunch at asianstudies@as.ua.edu
Lecture at 3:30 pm
Smith Hall 205
In the fall of 2009, the Washington Post reported the death of an 18-year-old Korean American as a result of her having been pummeled and asphyxiated in the bedroom of her suburban Virginia home, the alleged consequence of “a religious ritual,” possibly performed by a visiting Korean mudang. Drawing on over thirty years of fieldwork, Dr. Laurel Kendall critiques the facile association of mudang with exorcisms performed by some South Korean Pentecostals both within Korea and abroad. In this lecture, she will illuminate the often obscured premises of Korean shamans’ dealings with spirits and demonstrate how new transnational flows from Korea may yet be accompanied by exoticism and profound mistranslation.