From Ghosts to Guts: The Politics of the Paranormal in the Twentieth-Century Philippines

Speaker: Deirdre de la Cruz is an Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies and Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She is an historian and cultural anthropologist of the Philippines, with an interest in the transformation of religious sensibilities, beliefs, and phenomena in the 19th and 20th centuries. She is the author of the book Mother Figured: Marian Apparitions and the Making of a Filipino Universal (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and several articles on religion in the Philippines. Since the pandemic, she has undertaken a major “dig-where-you-stand” endeavor as co-PI of ReConnect/ReCollect: Reparative Connections to Philippine Collections at the University of Michigan.This is a two-year project that brings together Michigan faculty, curators, students, and members of the Filipino / Filipino American community in order to develop decolonial and reparative approaches to the vast collection of Philippine materials acquired by the University during the American colonial period. She also leads undergraduate students in working with primary sources from these collections to research and build the website The Philippines and the University of Michigan: 1870-1935.

Chair: James Robson, James C. Kralik, and Yunli Lou Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Harvard College Professor; Victor and William Fung Director, Asia Center, Harvard University