Loyola University Chicago

Department of Anthropology

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Dr. Adams quoted in New York Times' Up Front Magazine

Dr. Kathleen Adams was recently quoted in an article in the New York Times supplement Up Front Magazine.  The article sought to unpack the real story behind the Toraja zombie images circulating on the net and Dr. Adams’ interview focused on debunking the recently-emerged popular culture imagery of zombies in the predominantly-Christian Toraja homeland in Indonesia. In her interview, Adams stressed that this pop culture idea of zombies in Toraja grew out of outsider misunderstandings of photos of a Torajan ritual that occurs at periodic intervals and entails removing the dead from tombs, cleaning and re-clothing them and then returning them to their tombs. The article appeared in the January 12, 2015 issue, p. 2-3.