Throughout this course, we will examine how death, grief, and loss affects our lives and how American culture shapes the face of death. Loss, suicide, and grief may seem to set people apart from us and from ordinary life. But in a larger sense people who experience these crises share fundamental issues that ordinary adults also face. Among them are problems of intimacy and isolation, difficulties in maintaining self-esteem, struggles for individuality and autonomy, and tensions between independence and dependence. Through studying people who confront death, we learn about how American culture shapes their experience and, moreover, our lives.
American culture shapes the face of death in larger ways.
Sectors of the population remain at risk due to malnutrition, homelessness, safety hazards, and inadequate medical care. We will look at how American culture fosters death as well as the ways our culture promotes individual risk-taking, collective risks and massive destruction. In this class you will examine your thoughts about dying, grieving, and being suicidal from broader sociological and social psychological perspectives. We will apply these perspectives to a broad range of topics including the hospice movement, war, clinical death, funeral rituals, and the social meaning of grief. Although the class will be lecture-discussion, student attendance, preparation, and participation are crucial.