Death Struggle. Edvard Munch, 1915

‘Death is like a robe everyone has to wear.’ ~ African proverb.

This course takes a sociological and anthropological approach to one of the few experiences indisputably common to all human beings, indeed all living things. Students will be introduced to a rich variety of critical and cultural understandings of death, the dead and dying matters, and explore how dying, mourning and funerary practices vary in time and space across societies.

Topics for consideration and analysis are likely to include Necropolitics, the debate on assisted dying, European and Afrocentric perspectives on death and body repatriation, and different ways of body committal, among them traditional burial, cremation and aquamation (water cremation) and funerals. The course also aims to explore how modern medical and scientific technologies continue to transform perspectives and ethical positions on the dying human body, the process of dying and the corpse in the UK, the US and elsewhere.