ANTH 3035 is also offered in Spring 2025
ANTH 3035 is also offered in Fall 2023
ANTH 3035 is also offered in Fall 2021
Spring 2019 | ANTH 3035 Section 001: Anthropologies of Death (55691)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- A-F or Audit
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
UMNTC Liberal Education Requirement
- Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
Mon,
Wed 01:00PM - 02:15PM
UMTC, West Bank
Blegen Hall 110
- Enrollment Status:
Closed (50 of 50 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Anthropological perspectives on death. Diverse understandings of afterlife, cultural variations in death ritual, secularization of death in modern era, management of death in medicine, cultural shifts/conflicts in what constitutes good or natural death.
- Class Notes:
- For more information visit: http://classinfo.umn.edu/?langf001+ANTH3035+Spring2018
- Class Description:
- In this course we explore death from anthropological, historical, and cultural studies perspectives. We consider and discuss death rites, mourning practices, treatments of dead bodies, understandings of afterlife, and relationships with the dead within different social and political contexts. We pay particular attention to how these practices are informed and transformed by historical conditions and conflicts. We also discuss the medicalization of death in the modern world, addressing some of the recent shifts and contoversies related to biological definitions of death and cultural interpretations of what constitutes "good" or "natural" death. We explore the responses to contemporary bioethics of death on the part of various cultural communities. Finally we consider overtly politicized deaths, including the deaths of public figures and deaths due to political violence. We investigate the ways that the dead are recruited for contemporary national or community agendas, becoming voices for concerns about violence, alienation and injustice. The objective of the course is to reflect on the social and political meanings of death and to understand how ideas and practices related to death are shaped by historical experience. Texts and Readings include Passed on: African American Mourning Stories by Karla FC Holloway, Mourning and Melancholia by Sigmund Freud, A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death by Robert Hertz, excerpts from The Last Word: Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani by Nadia Seremetakis, excerpts from Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, excerpts from Western Attitudes Toward Death by Philippe Aries, excerpts from ...And A Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life, excerpts from Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture and the Peformance of Grief ed. by Adrian Lear and Deborah Lynn Steinberg, excerpts from The Political Lives of Dead Bodies by Katherine Verdery, and more. Readings are accompanied by documentary films. The class is largely constructed around large and small group discussion, with brief lectures.
- Grading:
- 30% Final Exam
30% Reports/Papers
10% In-class Presentations
30% Class Participation
- Exam Format:
- Take-home short essay exam
- Class Format:
- 20% Lecture
10% Film/Video
50% Discussion
20% Small Group Activities
- Workload:
- 50-60 Pages Reading Per Week
12-16 Pages Writing Per Term
1 ESSAY Exam(s)
1 Paper(s)
1 Presentation(s)
Other Workload: The pages of writing include the final take-home exam.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/55691/1193
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 16 April 2008
ClassInfo Links - Spring 2019 Anthropology Classes