Date: Saturday, May 20, 2023
Time: 2 - 5 ET (NYC Time)
Admission: $25 (General Admission) / $15 (Patreon Members) / $10 (Students)
 
PLEASE NOTE: This event will be recorded and available for all who sign up, as well as for our Patreon members at $5/month and above. Become a Member HERE.

Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email [email protected]. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.

Related book club on The Denial of Death here
 
Join The Ernest Becker Foundation (EBF) and Morbid Anatomy for a daylong symposium honoring the work and legacy of American anthologist and death theorist Ernest Becker, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of his Pulitzer prize winning The Denial of Death, along with the Ernest Becker Foundation’s 30 year anniversary.
 
This online event will feature talks by New York Times best-selling author Caitlin Doughty, host of Ask a Mortician and leader in the death positive movement; Sheldon Solomon, co-founder of Terror Management Theory; Mandy Benoualid & Jeremy Cohen, hosts of the TalkDeath podcast and website; as well as researchers, psychologists, authors, and more. Together, these presentations will offer an overview of Ernest Becker and his ideas, situate him in his cultural and historical milieu, and examine the ways in which his work continues to be important and relevant. We will discuss Terror Management Theory - the field of study that came out of Becker's work - as well as other related movements such as the death positive movement.
 
Ernest Becker won his Pulitzer prize in 1974 for his writing on the impacts of death anxiety. Drawing on many other great thinkers, he argued that managing our fear of mortality is a core human motivator, unconsciously impacting our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. This in turn, he argued, affects the way we live, make decisions, and interact with each other - especially those who are different from us. He posits that we attenuate our fear of death through the creation of worldviews and meaning systems (i.e. cultures), which give our lives purpose and meaning. Investing in these systems of meaning (religion, political affiliation, career, family, etc.) reduces death anxiety by building our self-esteem and enabling us to feel that we are part of something larger than ourselves. But on the flipside, due to our reliance on the protection that our culture affords, cultural challenges/threats can result in intergroup conflict such as prejudice, derogation, ostracism, or at its worst, violence. In this way, Becker’s ideas provide a useful lens for events we have seen play out time and again throughout history.
 
Becker’s ideas led to a field of social psychology called Terror Management Theory. Over 1500 experimental studies have now demonstrated support for Becker’s main thesis: when you remind people of mortality, they seek to bolster their self-esteem and become increasingly committed to their culture; they also become increasingly hostile towards outgroups, especially when those outgroups pose a direct threat to their own beliefs. These findings have provided evidence for the existentially protective nature of culture. While culture gives life a huge amount of beauty and meaning, blind adherence can prevent us from living harmoniously with one another. These ideas are not just academic – seen through this lens, our unwillingness to accept mortality is related to the hubris shown with our treatment of each other as well as our planet. Both the Ernest Becker Foundation and Morbid Anatomy draw on Ernest Becker’s ideas, emphasizing the importance of learning to cope with our own death anxiety as a means to help us live richer, less fearful lives, and coexist with one another more peacefully.

SPEAKER BIOS
Additional emerging TMT researchers TBA

Sheldon Solomon, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College. His research on Terror Management Theory – which examines the effects of the uniquely human awareness of death on behavior – along with that of Jeff Greenberg (at the University of Arizona) and Tom Pyszczynski (at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs) has been supported by the National Science Foundation and Ernest Becker Foundation, and was featured in the award winning documentary film Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality. He is co-author of In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror and The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Sheldon is an American Psychological Society Fellow, and a recipient of an American Psychological Association Presidential Citation (2007), a Lifetime Career Award by the International Society for Self and Identity (2009), the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs Annual Faculty Award (2011), and a Career Contribution Award by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (2021).

Caitlin Doughty is a mortician, advocate, and bête noire of the traditional funeral industry. Her educational webseries "Ask a Mortician" has been viewed almost 250 million times and all three of her books were New York Times bestsellers. She founded a Los Angeles funeral home as well as the funeral reform collective The Order of the Good Death, which spawned the death positive movement.

Mandy Benoualid is the President and co-founder of Keeper, and the co-founder and Editor of TalkDeath. Since 2013, Mandy has developed Keeper Memorials, a collaborative online memorial platform for families, which includes a suite of digital memorialization tools for deathcare professionals. Mandy works with the US Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration on the Veterans Legacy Memorial project, which memorializes Millions of American Veterans. Her work extends to editing the consumer-focused death positive blog, TalkDeath.com, interviewing deathcare professionals for the web series #TalkDeath, as well as attending and speaking at Death Cafes, and funeral and cemetery conferences. Mandy first came across Becker’s The Denial of Death while writing about the stigma and fears surrounding death in the West. It has since become a permanent resident of her nightstand and continues to influence her work and outlook on life. Mandy has served on numerous nonprofit boards including Leave Out Violence, The International Memorialization Suppliers Association and the PBS Documentary, Speaking Grief.

Jeremy Cohen is an Assistant Professor at McMaster University in Canada, where he teaches in the Department of Religious Studies. Jeremy is an anthropologist of religion whose research focuses on communities and techno-cultures seeking radical-longevity and immortality, as well as the historical and cultural framework of changing North American relationships to technology and death. Jeremy is the co-founder and editor of TalkDeath.com.

Greg Bennick has been fascinated with Becker’s writing and thought since 1997. He is currently finishing a biography on Becker, the first of its kind, which will see release in late 2023. Greg was producer and writer of Flight From Death: The Quest For Immortality, the first full length documentary feature on Becker and his work. A professional speaker and graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, Greg has presented Becker's ideas in 25 countries, including a full twenty-city tour across all of Russia. This was an attempt to unite people globally from diverse political and social backgrounds, while in the process trying not to get arrested by the FSB, the Russian secret police. He splits his time between Portland OR and Seattle WA. You can learn more about Greg at www.gregbennick.com

Erica Buist is a writer, journalist and lecturer living in London. She travelled to seven death festivals (in Mexico, Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan, and Indonesia), to try to understand how people from different cultures deal with mortal terror. She wrote a book about the journey called This Party’s Dead. Erica is also a playwright in Stockroom Theatre’s writer’s room, a features writer for the Guardian, a teacher for Guardian Masterclasses and has also contributed to publications such as the BBC, the Mirror, The Sunday Times, Medium, Newsweek, and various literary anthologies. She has lived in Mexico and Paris and speaks five languages – mainly to her dog. She tweets @ericabuist. Photos and video footage of the death festivals can be found on Instagram @thispartysdead.

Daniel Liechty, Ph.D., is a longtime reader and interpreter of Ernest Becker’s writings. Liechty is Professor of Social Work and Distinguished Lecturer in Arts and Sciences at Illinois State University. He is especially interested in the implications of Becker’s work in religion and spirituality and its applications in psychotherapy. His Becker-related books include Theology in Postliberal Perspective (1990), Transference and Transcendence (1995), Thinking about Faith in a Post-Christian Time (2003), and The Ernest Becker Reader (2005). More recently he edited Facing Up to Mortality: Interfaith/Interreligious Explorations (2021), exploring Becker’s ideas as a catalyst for interfaith communication. Liechty served some 20 years as Vice President of The Ernest Becker Foundation.

Dr. Kenneth Vail is a professor at Cleveland State University, and director of the Social Psychology & Existential Attitudes Research (SPEAR) Laboratory. He completed his BA in psychology at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and his MA and PhD at the University of Missouri. Dr. Vail’s research is focused on existential psychology, including the consequences of humans’ awareness of their own mortality, autonomy, and choice freedom, and the influence of these concerns on cultural activity (e.g., politics, religion), personal growth, and both physical health (e.g., nutrition, carcinogenic behavior) and mental health (e.g., PTSD). Dr. Vail won the APS Rising Star Award (Association for Psychological Science), and various other awards (e.g., Outstanding Research; Golden Apple Award; Outstanding Teaching; Merit Awards) for his research, teaching, mentoring, and service across a variety of domains. Dr. Vail is also a founder and President of the International Society for the Science of Existential Psychology.