ANTH 2053 - Life, Death and Culture

Life and death are the core universals for human beings, yet are the context for key contemporary debates, and a wide variety of practices and beliefs historically and culturally. Debates on such key topics as reproductive technologies, organ transplantation, and the 'good death' often encapsulate central social and cultural assumptions. This course explores such debates and assumptions through an examination of the cross-cultural nature of life and death in both western and non-western societies. Both birth and death have been core concerns of anthropology throughout its history, and continue to be the focus of research. Dominant themes of this course are the practices and beliefs at the start of life (conception, and birth), as well as at the end of life, including how connections are forged or severed between the living and the dead (aging, the process of death, grief, funerals and memorials, and the afterlife).