人类学-2020Spring-MHC-Approaching Death认识死亡

*本课程大纲版权归课程授课老师所有，如侵权请联系发布者删除；内容仅供豆瓣友邻交流学习，请勿商用

p.s. 位于麻省的文理学院，没法和ivy的含金量比，但教学质量很好。本着give& take的原则，分享这节我很喜欢的课回馈小组。

Approaching Death这节课会讨论如何prepare for a good death，如果认识亲属离去的悲伤情绪，如何看待立遗嘱、安乐死，了解殡仪产业，了解人们对死后生活的认识。

教授在Syllabus中有详细的阅读指导，比如哪些材料可以速度，那几页是阅读重点等等。

cr.2 Felicity Aulino

Course Description:

This class challenges assumptions about death and dying as we examine its meanings and related practices in various cultural contexts. We will ask, what is universal about death and dying, and what is socially constructed? What can the social sciences, biomedicine, literature, the arts, and our own qualitative research tell us about the processes of dying, of grieving, and of providing care? In essence, what does it take to approach death?

Objectives:

Students should expect to: 1) work collaboratively with peers to develop the means to “approach death” both scholastically and personally; 2) conduct independent research; 3) write more effectively; 4) develop greater media literacy; and 5) experiment with the boundaries of academic disciplines in order to engage meaningfully with the world.

Requirements:

This will be a participatory class (despite its size and duration!) in which we closely examine course readings and film screenings, document personal experience, and gather a set of primary and secondary materials for a final creative research project that explores an aspect of death and dying. A commitment to the exploration will be paramount. Assignments will include a weekly 1-page paper (usually a response to course readings, though occasionally taking a different form), a midterm assignment, and a final written project (project proposal due in March; final assignment includes an option for a visual or auditory component).

Grading: Response papers: 25%, Midterm Assignment: 25%, Final project: 25%, Participation: 25%

Course Overview:

PART 1. GROUNDINGS

PART 2. EXPLORING THE CULTURE OF MEDICINE

PART 3. WHO CARES?: LABOR, MEANING, and POWER

PART 4. MOURNING

PART 5. FUNERALS AND OTHER CLOSURES

PART 1. GROUNDINGS

Week 1 – Introduction

Tuesday, January 21

Readings

· Sherman Alexie. 2009. “War Dances,” August 10, 2009, The New Yorker

· In Class: Joan Halifax. “The Lucky Dark.”

Thursday, January 23

Readings

· Rebecca Hutchinson. 2019. “Goals that Richochet.” JAMA 322(24):2385-2385.

· Ocean Vuong. 2019. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel. Penguin Press.

o “Chapter” 1, p. 3 – 14.

Recommended/referenced in class:

· Taiye Selasi. 2013. Ghana Must Go, Part 1.

Week 2 – Approaching Death

Tuesday, January 28

Readings

· Mary Catherine Bateson. 1993 (1991). “Into the Trees,” In Sacred Trusts: Essays on Stewardship and Responsibility. (1-11)

· In Class: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. “Stroke of Insight”. Ted Talk http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229 near death experience - 'Stroke of Insight'

HIGHLY Recommended for overarching overviews, useful for resources for final projects!

· Allan Kellehear. 2007. A Social History of Dying. Cambridge University Press. Introduction, pages 1 – 8.

· Matthew Engelke. 2019. The Anthropology of Death Revisited. Annual Review of Anthropology 48:29-44.

· Phyllis Palgi and Henry Abramovitch. 1984. Death: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology 13: 385-417 (can skim)

· Sharon R. Kaufman and Lynn M. Morgan. 2005. The Anthropology of the Beginnings and Ends of Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 34:317-41 (can skim)

Thursday, January 30

Readings

· Alan Klima. 2002. “The Charnel Ground,” chapter 6 excerpt from The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand. (172-230)

· Felicity Aulino. 2008. no You nor I. 23 minutes min. sensory ethnography (in class screening)

PART 2. EXPLORING THE CULTURE OF MEDICINE

Week 3 – When does death arrive… ? Says who? And why?

Tuesday, February 4

Readings

· Edmunds, Molly. How stuff works: What Happens During the Dying Process? http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/human-biology/dying-process.htm

· Sherwin B Nuland. 1994. “The Strangled Heart.” From How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. (p 3-8)

· Donald Joralemon. 2016. “Dead?” Chapter 4 from Mortal Dilemmas. Routledge.

· Dorothy Ayers Counts and David R. Counts. 1985. “I’m Not Dead Yet! Aging and Death: Process and Experience in Kaliai.” [from Aging and Its Transformations: Moving TowardDeathin Pacific Societies. (Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania Monograph)]

o Short excerpt about this small group of Lusi-speaking Kaliai people of Northwest New Britain, Papua New Guinea - pp 144-145 and 150-154

Thursday, February 6

Readings

· Margaret Lock. 2002. Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

o“Preamble: Accidental Death” pp 1-13; “Memory Work” pp 232-234, “Procurement Anxiety” pp 259-262; “Sacrifice” pp 263-266; “Reflections on Brain Death: Japanese Health Care Professionals pp 277-280;

· Tarif Bakdash and Nancy Scheper Hughes, 2011. “Is it ethical for patients with renal disease to purchase kidneys from the world’s poor?”. PLOS

o http://www.ploscollections.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030349;jsessionid=91546E214FFB190B387E89739EFBECED

· LaFleur, William R. 1999. Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan. 1992. Princeton University Press

o Preface xiii – xvi and Ch. 3, “Social Death, Social Birth” pp 30-43

Recommended for more on organ transplantation

· Joralemon, Donald. “Organ Wars: The Battle for Body Parts.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 9(3): 335-356

· Lock, Margaret. “Transcending Mortality: Organ Transplants and the Practice of Contradictions.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 9(3): 390-399.

· Follow-up interview with Scheper Hughes

o http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/2011/nancy-scheper-hughes

o http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/2011/nancy-scheper-hughes-organ-trade

o http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/2011/nancy-scheper-hughes-new-book

Week 4 – Hospital Death & Notions of the “Good Death”

** Big week of readings, plan accordingly

Tuesday, February 11

Readings

· Sharon R. Kaufman “Ethnography of the Particular: The Individual Case and the Culture of Death in America” (Qualitative Gerontology 2002)

· Arthur Kleinman. 1996. The Good Death: Is it Compatible with Global Culture & Biomedicine? The Maine Scholar 9(Autumn):1-8.

· Dána-Ain Davis, 2019. Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth. New York University Press.

o Read pages ix – xi (top, until end of section), and 29 – 34 (top, until end of section).

o See also Infographic on Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Pregnancy-Related Deaths from CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternal-mortality/disparities-pregnancy-related-deaths/infographic.html

· Karla FC Holloway. 2002. Passed On: African American Mourning Stories.

o Introduction, p 1-8

· MaryJo DelVecchio Good et al. 2004. “Narrative Nuances on Good and Bad Deaths: Internists’ Tales from High-technology Work Places.” Social Science and Medicine 58(2004): 939-953 (can skim).

· In Class: Frederick Wiseman. 1970. Hospital. Documentary film (in class screening)

Thursday, February 13

Readings

· Anita Hanning. 2019. “Author(iz)ing Death: Medical Aid-in-Dying and the Morality of Suicide. Cultural Anthropology 53-77.

· Robert Pool 2004. “You’re not going to dehydrate mom, are you?”: Euthanasia, versterving, and good death in the Netherlands.” Social Science & Medicine 58: 955-966

· BBC Planning a Good Death – reading and worksheet, check this out

Recommended for this week

· Take a look at articles on Moodle discussing Thai, Japanese and Iranian examples (but note: the Iranian piece is bunk in some ways, but for your perusal.)

· Dying Wish. A WorldWide Production. 2008 documentary film (perhaps for class screening)

· New Game, “My Gift of Grace” http://mygiftofgrace.com/

Week 5 – Hospice: Origins and Extensions

Tuesday, February 18

Readings

· Atul Gawande. “Letting Go: What Should Medicine Do When It Can’t Save Your Life?” The New Yorker August 2, 2010.

o READ CAREFULLY – this is the key for the week.

· Hospice Care on the International Scene. 1997. Edited by Dame Cicely Saunders, and Robert Kastenbaum

o Dame Cicely Saunders: Hospices Worldwide: A Mission Statement (read pages 3 – 8)

o Robert Kastenbaum: Hospice Care in the United States (pages 101-113)

· Religious Understandings of a Good Death in Hospice and Palliative Care. 2012. Edited by Harold Coward and Kelli I. Stajduhar.

o Conclusion (p 297 – 315 goes through the entire book, this may be the most important of this cluster)

o Introduction (READ pages 1 – 6)

o Interfaith Chaplaincy in Hospice Palliative Care (p 277 – 295 – follow your interest in how you read)

o This book is really good and it is an ebook available through the library – you can check out the table of contents and read more on your own!

Thursday, February 20

NOTE: Guest Hospice Panel at UMass class today, 1:00-2:15 Lederle Hall Tower room 123

Readings

· Various media outlets offer a range of perspectives. See the following to get a sense of the conversation(s) – please bring to class NEWER examples!:

o The Cost of Dying. 60 Minutes Episode Dec. 3, 2010, skim read the write-up: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-5711689.html

o Avoiding the Call to Hospice, NYTimes Blog May 26, 2009: http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/avoiding-the-call-to-hospice/

o http://southfloridahospitalnews.com/page/The_Problem_of_Late_Referrals_to_Hospice/569/1/

o *Hospice Horror Stories: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2613612/posts

o For-profit hospice industry raises concerns: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2011/may/for-profit-hospice-industry-raises-worries

o Also, google around for death midwives, such as https://deathmidwife.org/

· Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. 1997. The Wheel of Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying. New York: Scribner

o There are No Accidents (p 15-18)

o Living Until Death (p. 121-125)

o My First Lecture (127 – 134)

· Susan Block 2001. “Psychological Considerations, Growth, and Transcendence at the End of Life: The Art of the Possible.” JAMA June 13, 2001, vol 285 no. 22. (SKIM is fine, get a sense of her tables, intros and conclusions… gems in there, follow your interest again!)

· Massachusetts Ballot Question #2 (you’ll be writing a midterm on this!)

Recommended:

· AJ Russ. 2005. “Love’s labor paid for: gift and commodity at the threshold of death. Cult Anthropology 20: 125-55

§ This provides a nice intro to some of the major critiques of hospice

· Joan Teno et al. 2007. “Timing of Referral to Hospice and Quality of Care.” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.

· In Class: The Life of Death - https://vimeo.com/154739710

· Paul Kalanithi. January 11, 2016. “My Last Day as a Surgeon.” The New Yorker, an excerpt from his posthumously published memoir, When Breath Becomes Air.

PART 3. WHO CARES?: LABOR, MEANING, and POWER

Week 6 –Care Work

(MIDTERM: 3-5 page position paper on 2012 MA Ballot Question 2 due)

Tuesday, February 25

Readings

· Thomas Edward Gass. 2004. Nobody's Home: Candid Reflections of a Nursing Home Aide. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

o Read the Forward and the Preface. Read “The Setting” (1-5). Read “The Initiation (7-11). Read as much of “The Cast” as you are interested in, skim as needed (13-55). Read “Regs” (57-61). Read part of “Back on the Hall”, to get a sense, (63-64). Read “Nurses and Aides” (73-78). ** And really read the Epilogue (177-189)

· Mary Zimmerman, Jacqueline Litt, and Christine Bose. 2006. Global Dimensions of Gender and Care Work. University of California Press.

o TOC. Introduction (1-5). Ch. 2. Global Cities and Survival Circuits (30-38). Ch. 12. International Migration, Domestic Work, and Care: Undocumented Latina Migrants in Israel (145-161) Ch. 14, Caregiving in Transnational Context (176-192).

· In class?: Shane Kyczan, “The Crickets Have Arthritis”:

o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VrZE8MCnIA

Thursday, February 27

Readings

· Noriko Yamamoto-Mitani and Margaret I Wallhagen. 2002. “Pursuit of Psychological Well-Being (Ikigai) and the Evolution of Self-Understanding in the Context of Caregiving in Japan.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 26: 399-417.

o Focus on pages 399-410

· Paul Farmer. 2004. An anthropology of structural violence. Curr. Anthropol. 45:305–25.

· Dale Borglum. 1997. “The Long Shadow of Good Intentions,” Tricycle: The Buddhist Review fall 1997: 66-69. (On caregiving and ego; we will return to this in future classes as well.)

For Skimming:

· Carole Levine and Thomas Murray, ed. The Cultures of Caregiving: Conflict and Common Ground among Families, Health Professionals, and Policy Makers. 2004.

o Read: Introduction; Caregiving as Family Affair: A New Perspective on Cultural Diversity (1-12). Skim“The Culture of Home Care: Whose Values Prevail?” (87-99)

· Donna Wagner, “The Financial Impact of Caregiving.” In Always on Call: When Illness Turns Families into Caregivers, edited by Carol Levine, 2004.

o Skim136-148

Recommended Readings this week and onward:

· http://theshapeofcare.org/ - a podcast about caregiving

· Selections from Madonna Harrington Meyer (ed) Care Work: Gender, Labor, and the Welfare State.

o “Introduction,” “A Historical Perspective on Care” by Emily K. Abel, “The History of Men’s Caring” by Scott Coltrane and Justin Galt, “Cash in Care” by Clare Ungerson, “caring by the Book” by Deborah Stone, “the International Division of Caring and Cleaning Work” by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, and “Filling in the Gaps in Long Term Care Insurance” by Jennifer M. Mellor.

o And, also from Meyer, of particular attention: “Paid Emotional Care” by Francesca M. Cancian (136-148)

o Ron Barrett. 2008. Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India. Rutgers University Press.

Week 7 – Necropolitics, Untimely Death, and Poiesis

(location of death interview guide due?)

Tuesday, March 3

Readings

· Che Gossett. 2014. “Queer Necropolitics: AIDS Activism, Black Radicalism, Queer and/or Trans Resistance.” Edited by Haritaworn, J., Kuntsman, A., and Posocco, S. p. 31 – 50.

· Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering

o Killing (32-60)

· In Class: Death and the Civil War, PBS documentary

Recommended:

· Achille Mbembe. 2019. Necropolitics. Duke University Press.

Thursday, March 5

Readings

· Could be we get a chance to read Whitney Battle-Baptiste on Sandra Bland…

· Robert Desjarlais. 2016. Subject To Death: Life and Loss in a Buddhist World. University of Chicago Press.

o Read: Prelude 1-17; Death, Impermanence Has Arisen 77-81; Transference of Consciousness 82-86; “No Form, No Sound…” 174-179

· Revisit Dale Borglum. 1997. “The Long Shadow of Good Intentions,” Tricycle: The Buddhist Review fall 1997: 66-69. (On caregiving and ego; we will return to this in future classes as well.)

· In class?: Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Mind Beyond Death http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEM3qif5NHU

o Long history of denial… the more you say no to fear, the more it increases.

Recommended this week or later, on child death:

· Myra Bluebond-Langner. 1980. The Private Worlds of Dying Children.

· Wendy Cadge and Elizabeth Catlin. 2006. “Making Sense of Suffering and Death: How Health Care Providers Construct Meanings in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.” Journal of Religion and Health 45, 2: 248-63

· Shane Kyczan, “The Crickets Have Arthritis”:

o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VrZE8MCnIA

PART 4. MOURNING

Week 8 – Expressions of Mourning, Ways of Grieving

(final project proposal due)

Tuesday, March 10

Readings

· Dennis Klass, Phyllis R. Silverman, and Steven L. Nickman. Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Francis

o See TOC, Read Chapter 1, “Introduction: What’s the Problem?” (3-23)

· Tony Walter. 1999. On Bereavement: The Culture of Grief. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press.

o Skim Introduction (xiii-xvii) and Prologue (1-15), and Policing Grief, Guidelines for grief: historical background (127-137, though **pay particular attention to p. 129)

· Tony Walter. 1996. “A New Model of Grief: Bereavement and Biography”. Mortality 1(1).

o Read Excerpts only from article: “The Process of Grief : Talking about the Dead (12-14) and “The Last Chapter” (14-15).

· Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey. Death, Memory and Material Culture. 2001.

o Read part of “Introduction: Remembering as Cultural Process” (1-4), and “Figuring Memory: Metaphors, Bodies and Material Objects” (23-46)

· In Class: La Maison en Petits Cubes. 2008. Japanese animated short.

Thursday, March 12

Readings

· Isabelle Clark-Decès. 2005. No One Cries for the Dead: Tamil Dirges, Rowdy Songs, a and Graveyard Petitions. Berkeley: University of California Press

o Read Introduction (1-20) and start of Ch. 1, “A Different Grief” (21-22)

· Alison Bechdel. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Ch 2: A Happy Death.

· V.S. Naipaul. 2020. “Grief: A Writer Reckons with Loss.” New Yorker Jan 6, 2020.

Recommended for those so theoretically inclined…

· Alys Eve Weinbaum, “Ways of Not Seeing: (En)gendered Optics in Benjamin, Baudelaire, and Freud.” In Loss, edited by David L. Eng and David Kazanjian, 2003. (396-426)

· Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”.

* * Spring Break * *

Week 9 – Rage, Violence, and Compassion

Tuesday, March 24

Readings

· Beth A. Conklin. Consuming grief: compassionate cannibalism in an Amazonian

o Introduction, xv-xxxi

· Renato Rosaldo. “Grief and the Headhunter’s Rage.” (originally published 1989). From Violence in Ware and Peace: An Anthology, edited by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois, 2004.

o Read in its entirety, pages 150-156.

Thursday, March 26 No Class

Recommended Readings Anyway

· Nancy Scheper-Hughes. 1992. Death Without Weeping. University of California Press

o Ch. 7: “Two Feet Under and a Cardboard Coffin: The Social Production of Indifference to Child Death.” Read 268-273.

o Ch. 8: “ M)Other Love: Culture, Scarcity, and Maternal Thinking.” Read 340-399.

o Go through Introduction. “Tropical Sadness” Read as interested 1-30, particularly important for those of you interested in anthropological methods, engaged / applied anthropology and its relationship to interpretive anthropology, and for a striking account of Nancy Scheper-Hughes personal engagement and history with this area of research. (nice bit on cultural relativism as well, see page 21-22)

PART 5. FUNERALS AND OTHER CLOSURES

Week 10 – Ritual

Tuesday, March 31

Readings

· Michael Puett. 2011. “Sages, the Past, and the Dead: Death in the Huainanzi.” In Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought, edited by Amy Olberding and Philip Ivanhoe. State University of New York Press, pages 225-248.

· Revisit Robert Desjarlais. 2016. Subject To Death: Life and Loss in a Buddhist World. University of Chicago Press. “No Form, No Sound…” 174-179

· Karla Holloway. 2002. Passed On: African American Mourning Stories. 2002. Duke University Press.

o Read “Funeralized: The Remains of our Days” (150-188)

Recommended

· Alan C. Swedlund. 2010. Shadows in the Valley: A Cultural History of Illness, Death, and Loss in New England, 1840-1916.

o Introduction and Chapter 1, pages 1 – 22, and excerpt from Chapter 9, pages 184-190.

· Adam Seligman, Robert Weller, Michael Puett, and Bennett Simon. 2008. Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. Oxford University Press.

o Introduction (p. 3-15); for greater appreciation of the argument, see Chapter I, “Ritual and the Subjunctive” (17-42, with particular attention to the explication on 19-20, and onward 21-22+ for really fun illustrations)

Thursday, April 2

Readings (these readings subject to change)

· Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington. 1991 (1979 1st edition). Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press

o READ Introduction to the Second Edition (1-23); Read (or at least skim) “1, Preliminaries” (24-39). READ “Ch. 8, American Deathways” (191-214). The rest of the book is provided for you to read depending on your interest (see recommended).

Further Readings Recommended this week and beyond

· Departures, 2008 Japanese film by Yōjirō Takita (so wonderful!!!)

· Hikaru Suzuki. 2000. The Price of Death: The Funeral Industry in Contemporary Japan. Sanford, CA: Stanford University Press

o Chapter 4: “The Funeral Ceremony: Rites of Passage”

· Cynthia Robinson Dean. 1996. “Beyond Death: A Study of Near-Death Experience.” Maine Scholar. Volume 9: 27-30.

· Getting Comfortable with Near Death Experiences: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179515/

· Read about the discovery of a previously unidentified member of the early human lineage – Homo naledi,a hominin species who seem to have buried their dead: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/science/south-africa-fossils-new-species-human-ancestor-homo-naledi.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=1

SATURDAY, APRIL 4 – Five College Anthropology Conference!

Week 11 – Dust to dust, ashes to ashes

Thursday, April 9

Readings

· Erik W. Davis. 2016. Deathpower.

o Read pages 39-41 and Chapter 2, funeral.

· Read (or at least skim) Vardit Rispler-Chaim. 1993. “The Ethics of Postmortem Examinations in Contemporary Islam. Journal of Medical Ethics. 19: 164-168.

Recommended Readings

· Jean Langford. 2013. Consoling Ghosts: Stories of Medicine and Mourning from Southeast Asians in Exile. University of Minnesota Press.

Week 12 – Industry

Tuesday, April 14

Readings

· Read Katrina Spade, “Of Dirt and Decomposition: Proposing a Resting Place for the Urban Dead” UMass School of Architecture, 2012.

· In Class: Jae Rhim Lee: My Mushroom Burial Suit http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jae_rhim_lee.html

· Peter Andrey Smith. Jan 18, 2016. “The Living Dead.” The New York Times Magazine.

o http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/the-living-dead.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share By studying the microscopic bacteria that bloom on our bodies after we die, scientists hope to unlock surprising mysteries of the departed.

· Capsula Mundi Project: www.capsulamundi.it/progetto_eng.html

· Check out “Opening the Sky Door,” a photo essay by Thomas Kelly, from Tricycle fall 1997.

Thursday, April 16

Readings

· Jessica Mitford. The American Way of Death Revisited. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

o Read Editor’s Note (ix-x)

o Skim Foreword and Introduction (xi-xix)

o Read Chapter 5, “The Story of Service” (41-53)

o Skim as interested Chapter 10, “Cremation” (111-122)

o Skim “What the Public Wants” (123-137)

o Read Chapter 16, “A Global Village of the Dead” (188-205)

o Skim Chapter 19, “Pay Now – Die Poorer” (256-269)

· Hikaru Suzuki. The Price of Death: The Funeral Industry in Contemporary Japan. Sanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.

o Ch. 7, “The Commoditization of the Bathing Ceremony” (read 179-181, and skim through 202 according to your interest)

Recommended

· Mark Harris. Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. Scribner, 2007.

o Skim through the entire book – includes illustrative stories and great info! Pay particular attention to each chapter’s “Resoure Guide”

· Ronald G.E. Smith. 1996. The Death Care Industries in the United States. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc

o See Pictures

· New York Times, “Home Burials Offer an Intimate Alternative” July 2009: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/us/21funeral.html

· Seattle Times, “ ‘Death Midwives’ Tap a Growing Market”, December 2008: http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2008563478_funerals27.html

· Karla Holloway. Passed On: African American Mourning Stories. 2002. Duke University Press.

o Who’s Got the Body? The Business of Burial (15-56),

Week 13 – Life, The Afterlife, and Beyond…

Tuesday, April 21 No class this week, but please read Stevenson for next week discussion

Readings

· Lisa Stevenson. 2014. Life Beside Itself. University of California Press. Read Chapter 4: Life-of-the-Name, p. 103-128.

Thursday, April 23 No class this week

Please watch “Griefwalker” is possible, documentary available on Kanopy via MHC library.

Recommended!

· Mary Roach. 2005. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. New York: W. W. Norton & Company

o I don’t own this and all the copies are mysteriously “missing” from the UMass Library… spooky! But do take a look sometime, this book is fun.

o Read Excerpts here: http://www.maryroach.net/spookExcerpts.html

· Mary Roach. 2004. Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers

o Great follow-up to our recent conversations, including a chapter on medicinal cannibalism, and one on compost for cadavers.

· “Hospice cat can ‘sense’ when death is on the way” – BKK Post 7-27-07.

o http://teakdoor.com/thailand-and-asia-news/16215-hospice-cat-can-sense-when-death.html

· "Cryonics Death in the deep freeze", documentary from 2010… Unfortunately, I do believe this link is now broken: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=1598612092045110436&autoPlay=true&playerMode=embedded

· Tony Walter. 1996. The Eclipse of Eternity: A Sociology of the Afterlife. Palgrave Macmillan.

· Robert A. F. Thurman. “What is Death?” Tricycle Fall 1997, 27-29.