All living things die. This event, and our varied human responses to it, will be examined from many different vantage points: literature, art, music, medicine, psychology, religion, culture, philosophy. The course is a survey, as any one of these approaches could more than fill our time. The inevitability of bereavement and loss, the denial and certainty of our own death, provide the coherence to this study.

We will explore emotional and rational languages, subjective and objective realities of the ways people in the western world have made sense of death and dying. Although we will focus primarily on western, and specifically North American practices, we also will look cross-culturally to provide avenues for contrast and methods to evaluate and critique our own practices and beliefs. We will discuss contemporary issues such as the management of death by funeral and health care industries, legal, ethical and policy issues, and the psychology of bereavement.