Candi Cann

Transcript

Derek Smith:
Hello and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week, we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors, and more, discuss an important topics in higher education, research, and student life. I'm Derek Smith, and today on the program, we're visiting with Candi Cann. Dr. Cann serves as associate professor of religion in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core, a noted researcher on death and dying, and the impact of memory in shaping how lives are recalled, remembered, and celebrated. Dr Cann has written several books, including Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century. In 2022, Dr. Cann earned a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award and spent the year teaching and conducting research in South Korea's Hannam University, one of that nation's few Christian universities. She's one of five Baylor faculty members to have received this highly competitive honor in the last three years. Back from South Korea, but also getting ready to return again, I know you've got a lot on your plate. Dr. Cann, thanks so much for joining. It's great to have you here, especially given of your time during this busy stretch for you.

Candi Cann:
Oh, of course, Derek. It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Derek Smith:
Well, I know you are headed back. In fact, as this program airs, you'll be back in South Korea, but I know you had quite an experience through the Fulbright program over this past year. So let's start with a little fill in the blank, if you will. Your year in South Korea with the Fulbright program meant what? Meant, fill in the blank, what to you?

Candi Cann:
I was thinking about this question, and for me it was life coming full circle. It takes about a year, a year and a half to actually get through the application process. So when I applied, I was on my computer dreaming of exotic locations I could go to to leave the quarantine of my house and online teaching. So in many ways, it was just like dreaming. I was simply dreaming of places that I would want to be and come up with projects that I envisioned researching.
So I actually got the Fulbright and was able to go to South Korea. Also, it was so meaningful to me because it was the end of pandemic masking while I was in Korea. In Korea, everyone was required, it was a national law. Everyone was required to wear a mask everywhere, in the classroom, on the public transportation. So one day the law lifted and all the masks were gone. So it was kind of exciting to go through this in Korea. It was the end of pandemic masking, travel opened up. I was an exchange student in Korea 33 years before when I was an undergraduate in college, and so I also had the chance to go see my host family that I lived with.

Derek Smith:
Wow.

Candi Cann:
Yeah, she's an eye doctor, my host mom, and I found the address for her clinic and just walked in and surprised her one day. So she was absolutely shocked. We had lost touch over the years. So that was really fun. And then my daughter got to meet my host mom and my host dad, and I got to see my little brothers from when I lived there. So it was just this beautiful moment in life that was very healing in many ways, just even beyond the research in the classroom.

Derek Smith:
That's very cool. So you talk about being there as an undergrad and then now as a professional. I'm curious, you think about your time there as an exchange student versus now, what felt the same to you? What felt different? And I mean that in terms of the environment, what you saw in South Korea, but just maybe even your own experience from the intervening years.

Candi Cann:
Yeah, that's a great question too, Derek. So I think I had a couple reactions. So one was, I don't think I realized how old I was, and I really saw that because Hannam had expanded, they had bought the campus of an adjacent international school next to the campus. So now they're like two or three times as big. There's like 10 coffee shops on campus. So there were those kind of changes that I didn't expect. My advisor, when I lived in Korea, I lived there for a year, and I studied with John Somerville, who's a Harvard grad. He was one of the very first Presbyterian ministers, and his parents were missionaries in China, and he moved to Korea, I think in 1953, '54. So really helped with restoration after the Korean War and helped Korea rebuild. His house is now a museum and it's a film site for Kdramas. It's a beautiful house. It's this interesting mix of American architecture with Korean style.
So it definitely felt weird to be on campus and to see ... The place where I used to go to Bible study every Friday was now turned into a film set and a museum, and a building was named after my mentor. But also just the notion of time and place intersecting. I've always thought about travel as going to a place, but I had never really thought about it as being time constrained as well. So the experience of going to Korea made me realize that when you go someplace, you also visit some time and you really will never visit that time and that place again because time keeps shifting. And while I was there this time, multiple restaurants closed down and new shops opened. So it was just kind interesting to be there and to think about these things, again, particularly after being confined to my house for a while during the pandemic.

Derek Smith:
Dr. Cann, I want to ask you as we visit further on the program about how being there and that culture that you just described and seeing those changes, how specifically it impacted the research and the work you're doing. But before I do, let's make sure that people are up to speed beyond just the brief description I gave at the top of the programs. So your research, your scholarly interests, if you are in line at the faculty center and you meet a new faculty member from another department and they say, "What do you do? What do you study?" what would you tell them is your interest?

Candi Cann:
Well, I tend to lead with, I have a PhD in comparative religions and I teach world religions at Baylor. I also teach Buddhism. But my actual research focus is death, dying, and grief. My website is deathscholar.com. So I specialize in all things death and dying, and basically I have jumped from topic to topic within that larger topic of death, dying, and grief.

Derek Smith:
So what are some of the questions or the topics that really drive you from when you got started in this point to now the things that no matter how many times you look for answers, it still intrigues you, invigorates you?

Candi Cann:
Yeah. So I tend to always examine the intersection of culture, religion, and death, dying, and grief. So that's my primary one. And then within that intersection of death and culture and religion, I examine subtopics. One of my favorites is technology, looking at different forms of technology and the way those technologies are shifting and adapting in response to death and dying. Food rituals when observing grief customs around the world, and so I love examining that as well. And then the other one is I really tend to look at marginalized populations. So the intersection of minoritized bodies, minoritized populations in the intersection with death and dying.

Derek Smith:
It seems to me that maybe part of this answer is cultural understanding and appreciation. What are some of the things you hope to accomplish as you introduce students? I know your work's been covered in the media, popular publications beyond even the higher education area. What are some of the things that you hope your research enlightens for people or encourages them to think about?

Candi Cann:
I think the big one is just, I feel that in the United States, we're scared to talk about death and dying. We're scared to talk about grief and grieving. We tend to not talk about it until we experience it ourselves, and then it makes it more difficult to handle. And we don't quite know how to have conversations around this. It's one of those topics that everyone, your parents, your grandparents, tell you not to talk about at the dinner table. So I think people just don't know how to have conversations around this topic. So for me, the number one hope that I have out of teaching this is just generating conversation, getting people comfortable talking about death, because here's the thing, Derek, everyone dies. We all will die. The moment you're born, you're born into death as well. So this is one of the most important things for me, is that I can help make people comfortable around this topic and help generate conversation, and hopefully along the way also help give some tools that might help people cope and learn how to better manage and deal with dying and death and grief.

Derek Smith:
That's wonderful. Visiting with Dr. Candi Cann, associate professor of religion in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core. So Dr. Cann, let's tie your research to the practical experience that you had in South Korea last year through the Fulbright program. So let me ask you first, the culture in which you were immersed in South Korea and Hannam, certainly you had that experience with it already as an exchange student, but how would you describe the culture and specifically as it relates to the work that you do?

Candi Cann:
Yeah. Again, this is where the snapshot and the intersection of place and time is really important because when I was there, I was there in 1990, '91, and it was very traditional. They still had martial law at times. They would still do a drill once a month in preparation for an invasion from North Korea. My host family still talked about the trauma of the Korean War and the family they had left behind in North Korea. So it was a very different time, and they were really struggling to make sure that democracy was embraced. So there were lots of student protests.
One of the things I most loved about Korea in the 1990s was how politically engaged the students were. I was not as a student. It really opened my eyes to how lucky I was to live in the United States, to come from a place where democracy was taken for granted, and it helped me appreciate how wonderful democracy can be. So it was interesting to return because I think now, I think the students are more like where I was in the 1990s. Now things run really well, and democracy is firmly in place. It's so progressive and it's so modern. It's very efficient, everything runs really smoothly.
So there's still some cultural differences in the sense that Korea is a collectivist society where United States is much more individualistic. But I was really surprised about, I would say, there's less of politically active engagement than there was before. But part of that is because they can take it for granted. Right? So again, it is just such an interesting place to be. But I chose Hannam because of a variety of multiple factors, and one was that relationship that I had with them. I had a longstanding relationship. I was one of the first exchange students, and now I actually was their first Fulbright. So that was kind of neat to be able to walk with them in that path.
Hannam is, as you mentioned earlier, Derek, they're a Christian institution, and so they have a very similar university profile to Baylor. They're about the same size. They're also private. They have a Christian identity. They have a similar focus on research, and they have a research mission and a growth mindset. So I felt like it was a really good institutional fit for Baylor as well. I also wanted to reengage with Asia in my forthcoming research. And I really wanted to help Baylor students have the opportunities that I've had in my life to be able to go and study at Hannam, to visit Korea, to learn about Korean culture. So I wanted to establish an exchange partnership between Hannam and Baylor. In fact, I'm so excited about this, Baylor just hosted a visit yesterday from Hannam's president who came to visit Baylor University. And again-

Derek Smith:
That's great.

Candi Cann:
Right?

Derek Smith:
Mm-hmm.

Candi Cann:
And as you mentioned earlier, we're going to have Baylor in Korea this summer, and I'm taking 10 students to Hannam for our pilot program to visit Korea.

Derek Smith:
Well, that's wonderful. It's neat to see how those relationships have bloomed and blossomed over 30 years to now really, really grown. We hope it's a wonderful trip for you and for the students as you share and learn together.
We visit with Dr. Candi Cann. Dr. Cann, as you think about your discipline specifically, why is South Korea an interesting place to study the culture around death and dying? What makes that a rich place for you to really get your hands dirty and dig into what you see there?

Candi Cann:
That's a great question, Derek. So I had two primary research aims. The first one was an examination of Korean funeral homes. Today, in South Korea, 92% of all funeral homes are actually located in hospitals. And that's been a huge shift in the last 30 years. They used to be kind of like the United States where you tended to have neighborhood funeral homes, but now they've moved to the hospital, partly, again, out of efficiency and convenience. Because hospitals have parking lots, it's easy to simply move the body from the hospital into the funeral home, but they also have the infrastructure. So in Korea, funerals tend to be a three-day affair, and you will generally invite family and friends over the course of three days, and then you will serve meals, and then you will also stay overnight to sit with the body. So you need a lot of infrastructure for that. You need large holes, you need this large kitchens, you need places for the family to sleep, places for them to shower and change, and you need large parking lots.
So I was really interested in examining that. What I didn't count on that was kind of interesting was, there's a lot of superstitions surrounding death and dying in Korea, and so people did not want to talk about it. So that made it a little challenging, partly because of the time limitations and time constraints. But I was able to go on site visits and do conduct interviews, and I had a translator go with me. I speak some Korean, but not really at the research-level Korean. So the other project was on technology and the intersection with death. There's a lot of really interesting palliative care technology emerging in Korea, and there's a lot of really interesting technology that intersects with kind of disability and the dying process in Korea. I have a book coming out in 2025 with MIT called Augmented, which will examine living and dying with disability and the intersection with technology. And that research was actually quite fruitful in Korea.

Derek Smith:
Visiting with Dr. Candi Cann. Dr. Cann, as we head into the final few minutes on the program, I'm curious, interacting with South Korean students, what did you enjoy most about that exchange?

Candi Cann:
Oh, that's a great question, Derek. I actually taught two classes while I was there on my Fulbright, both of which I had never taught before. So one was introduction to sociology. I teach a class that's similar to that here at Baylor. And then I taught introduction to theological English in the Christian Studies Department, teaching theologians about the English terms in English. I loved both of my classes. I loved the students. I loved learning from them. They're so eager, they're so happy to be learning, and it really was exciting for me. And then they have a special teacher's day in Korea where you buy your teacher flowers. So they all planned a big surprise and brought me flowers. And then we all went out to dinner together afterwards. So it was just very sweet and touching.
As a university professor, I really love being with my students, and it's partly why I was a faculty in residence for three years on Baylor's campus. So I really enjoyed. I also lived on campus at Hannam, and I will again this summer. So I think that was part of what I enjoyed so much was, again, getting to be in community with students, getting to live among students, and getting to watch their whole student process. I moved in a couple of weeks before they moved in, so I got to see them. Their school year starts on March 1st, so instead of fall, they start in the spring, and that's their first semester. So I got to watch student drop off and all the parents crying. So it was really kind of neat to be on campus and community with these students.

Derek Smith:
Well, I know you can tell it was a meaningful time and I know it's exciting for you to head back there to Hannam with Baylor students. I'm curious, as we wind things down now, several of your colleagues are also taking part, I should say, in Fulbright experiences around the globe, two more this year. We have record setting numbers of students receiving Fulbright awards. I'm just curious, any advice you would share that you would take away to future faculty members who are going to be participating in Fulbright experience, or even students, I know although that's a different experience that they have?

Candi Cann:
Yeah, I think the most important thing for faculty members applying is the letter. You have to get a letter from an inviting institution. I really think that was a key piece. I know one of my other colleagues, he got a letter of recommendation from someone here at Baylor, from President Livingstone. I received a letter of invitation from the president of Hannam. So part of it is demonstrating that you have a relationship established with this other institution that you would like to deepen and further. So that's probably the most important piece of the puzzle, is getting a really great letter of invitation. The other thing is just thinking about the ways in which you can create relationships and multiple layers. For Fulbright, the success metrics are that you are establishing an MOU, that you are promoting American culture, and that you are basically creating long-lasting relationships between your institution and the inviting institution.
So thankfully, Baylor has supported me in all of that by inviting Hannam over to Baylor. Jeff Hamilton, before he retired, signed an MOU that will last five years with Hannam. So I've been really fortunate that Baylor has supported me in reaching those metrics. But that's really what the key piece to think about as a faculty member. It's not just about you and your research at the institution in the other country. It's about establishing a long-term relationship on multiple layers for the students at your institution, for the other faculty that you work with, and then just institution partnerships in general.

Derek Smith:
Well, we can definitely see where that's taking place in the relationships you have there between Baylor and Hannam University. And obviously, as this program airs, you're already going to be there, but as we're talking, I'll say safe travels to you and the whole Baylor team. We'll be excited to see what the fruits of your time there shared in South Korea are. Thanks again for taking the time to join us here on the program.

Candi Cann:
Oh, thank you, Derek. I really appreciate it.

Derek Smith:
Well, we'll look forward to seeing that and hearing those experiences that your students share. Dr. Candi Cann, our guest on Baylor Connections. Dr. Cann serves as associate professor of religion in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core. This is Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. Reminder, you can hear this in other programs online, baylor.edu, and you can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.