Art & the History of Art Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Thomas W. Laqueur

Please join us for Thomas Laqueur’s lecture "The Work Of The Dead," which explains why the living need the dead and therefore care for their bodies.

Thomas Laqueur, Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History at Berkeley, specializes in the cultural history of the body, and in the history of humanitarianism and of popular religion and literacy. His books include Work of the Dead, Solitary Sex, Making Sex and Religion and Respectability. He is also currently writing a short history of humanitarianism as well as a book about dogs in Western art. He writes for the London Review of Books and was a founding editor of the journal Representations. He received a Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award, which he used to commission and write a libretto for an opera based on José Saramago’s novel Death with Interruptions as well as to support projects on human rights, religion and science studies. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. He comes to Amherst as part of the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Visiting Scholar Program.

This event is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow. This event is sponsored by Amherst College’s Beta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the Corliss Lamont Lectureship for a Peaceful World and the Departments of History, Religion and Art & the History of Art.