Description
This interdisciplinary course interrogates the social, cultural, psychological, medical, ethical, philosophical, and spiritual issues that surround and possibly give meaning to the experiences of dying, death, loss, mourning, and living on after the death of significant people in our lives. Visual materials and methods (film, websites, videography, and photography) are combined with traditional materials methods of analysis (reading, class discussion, and class reports) to explore various themes including: the death system; societal responses to death, including those that are untimely, violent or preventable; end-of-life illnesses including Alzheimer’s, dementia, heart disease, and cancer; caring for the dying and the filial crisis; burial and memorializing rituals; assisted death, right-to-die, euthanasia, and the social causes and impact of ending one’s own life by suicide; and the ideas of immortality and transcendence.