Life Science Symposium: The End of Life from Humanistic Perspectives

This year our Life Sciences Symposium has examined the end of life from perspectives offered by medical scientists (Fall) and social scientists (Winter). This Spring we conclude our series on this topic by exploring end of life questions with two eminent professors in Stanford's humanities faculty: Michael Shanks, who will discuss "Death and Performance in Prehistory: Time, Memory, and the Embeddedness of Death in the Life of Early Farming Communities in Northern Europe," and Robert Harrison, author, most recently, of The Dominion of the Dead, a meditation on how the thought of death shapes the communion of the living.

Michael Shanks is the Omar and Althea Hoskins Scholar at Stanford, where he is also Professor of Classics, and, by courtesy, Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology. He earned his PhD at Cambridge University in 1992, and since then has been exploring how new archaeological thinking is changing the way we understand history.

Robert Pogue Harrison is the Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature and chair of the Department of French and Italian at Stanford. In addition to The Dominion of the Dead, he is the author of The Body of Beatrice and Forests: The Shadow of Civilization.

Registration is appreciated - Seating is limited; please arrive early.

Free.