Among the space-age cityscapes of Korea's deeply wired and trend-setting population centers, Koreans maintain the vibrant Shamanic traditions of their ancestors according to anthropologist Laurel Kendall. In her latest book, Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion (University of Hawai'i Press), Kendall, chair of the Anthropology Division at the American Museum of Natural History, argues that Korean Shamanism remains a vital force in Korean spiritual life, and offers lively accounts of how ancient Shamanic traditions help Korean professionals navigate the anxieties of modern life. 

Thursday, May 6, 2010
5:45 PM Check-in
6:00 PM Presentation

Dr. Laurel Kendall, an anthropologist with a focus on Korea, curates the Asian Ethnographic Collections and chairs the Anthropology Division at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She also teaches anthropology at Columbia University, and was trained in a strong ethnographic and area studies tradition—one that required full speaking and reading fluency in the language, extensive knowledge of the particulars of local life, and detailed analysis of the historical, cultural, political, and economic context within which local realities unfold. Given the close historical and cultural ties within Southeast Asia, she also has a working knowledge of Chinese and Japanese studies and language. In recent years, Dr. Kendall has expanded this horizon to include Vietnam. When she trained in the 1970s, Dr. Kendall assumed, along with most of her colleagues, that she was preparing to study a rural society through fairly static models. Instead, she found the challenge of working in Korea over the intervening decades has been to apply close-range and long-term ethnography's depth of insight to a fluid, highly urbanized industrial society.