Gary M. Laderman

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Gary M. Laderman
Born
💼 Occupation	Academic and author

Gary Michael Laderman is a scholar of religion and culture as well as an author, and academic. He is a professor at Emory University.

Laderman's research has focused on American religious history and culture, examining the cultural and religious dimensions of death, popular religion, and the intersections between psychoactive substances and spirituality. He is a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Education

Laderman received his B.A. in Psychology from California State University, Northridge, in 1986. He earned an M.A. in History of Religions from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1988, and completed his Ph.D. in 1994 from the same institution.

Career

Laderman joined the Department of Religion at Emory University in 1994, where he was chair of the department from 2008 to 2019 and also serves as a professor.

Laderman was managing editor of Camera Obscura: A Journal of Feminism and Film Theory between 1991 to 1994. He later co-founded and directed Religion Dispatches. He is also the founder and editor of Sacred Matters Magazine. In addition, he was co-editor of the multivolume encyclopedias Science, Religion, Societies and Religion and American Cultures.

Research

Laderman's research has examined the ways religious life is experienced, expressed, and negotiated in American society. A central theme of his work is the cultural and religious significance of death and mortality in the United States, particularly as reflected in popular culture, media, and ritual practices. Through books such as The Sacred Remains and Rest in Peace, he analyzed how practices surrounding death functioned as social and cultural expressions that reflected broader values, collective identities, and attitudes toward mortality. In reviews of his book Rest in Peace, historian Robert V. Wells described the work as a wide-ranging and innovative history of the twentieth-century American funeral industry. However, he also highlighted that the book presents funeral directors' perspectives somewhat uncritically and is less convincing in defending the industry's claim that it merely provided services Americans genuinely "wanted." Through his work, he examined death as a cultural and social experience, revealing how American society understands and shapes attitudes toward death. His research also drew on sociological and cultural approaches to religion, including analyses of religion as a system of practices that contributed to social meaning and cohesion.

Beyond the study of death, Laderman's work has explored the presence of religious meaning outside formal institutions, particularly in popular culture and everyday life. In his book titled Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States, he examined how media, entertainment, celebrity culture, and other secular contexts functioned as sites of religious expression and experience. Lynn E. McCutcheon characterized the book as an ambitious attempt to locate religion within diverse forms of contemporary cultural passion. His research has also addressed the historical and cultural relationships between psychoactive substances and religious or spiritual practices in the United States, as well as the role of spirituality in health and well-being.

Selected awards

• 1998 – Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies
• 2007 – Fulbright U.S. Scholar, Nagoya American Studies Seminar
• 2009 – Crystal Apple Award for Excellence in Graduate Education and Instruction, Emory University

Bibliography

Books

• Laderman, Gary (1996). The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799–1883 (1st ed.). Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300078688. Search this book on
• Laderman, Gary (2003). Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-century America. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195183559. Search this book on

• Laderman, Gary (2010). Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States. The New Press. ISBN 9781595584847. Search this book on

• Laderman, Gary (2012). American Civil Religion: a Fortress Press eTextbook. Fortress Press. ISBN 9781451425598. Search this book on
• Laderman, Gary (2020). Don't Think About Death: A Memoir on Mortality. Deeds Publishing. ISBN 9781950794126. Search this book on
• Laderman, Gary (2025). Sacred Drugs: How Psychoactive Substances Mix with Religious Life. Routledge. ISBN 9781003601616. Search this book on

Selected articles

• Laderman, Gary (1995). "Locating the Dead: A Cultural History of Death in the Antebellum, Anglo-Protestant Communities of the Northeast". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 63 (1): 27. doi:10.1093/JAAREL/LXIII.1.27.
• Laderman, Gary (1997). "The Body Politic and the Politics of Two Bodies: Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln in Death". Prospects. 22: 109–132. doi:10.1017/S0361233300000065.
• Laderman, Gary (2000). "The Disney Way of Death". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 68 (1): 27–43. doi:10.1093/JAAREL/68.1.27.
• Laderman, Gary (2006). "The Cult of Doctors: Harvey Cushing and the Religious Culture of Modern Medicine". Journal of Religion and Health. 45: 533–548. doi:10.1007/s10943-006-9052-7.
• Laderman, Gary (2007). "Violence and Religious Life: Politics, Culture, and the Sacred in the United States". Nanzan Review of American Studies: A Journal of the Center for American Studies, Nanzan University. 29: 9–22. doi:10.15119/00000152.

References

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