Spring 2018

In this, the seventh issue of Spectrum, three things converged: my editorship, the fact that I was asked to teach a class on death and death rituals, and the 200-year anniversary of the initial publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This convergence ultimately created the main theme of this issue, death and the body, while still asking the ultimate question of anthropology. The ultimate question of anthropology, the driving force behind our work, is the question of what it means to be human.