Anthropology 255 - DYING AND DEATH

Spring
2019
01
4.00
Donald Joralemon
TTh 09:00-10:20
Smith College
30430-S19
SEELYE 206
djoralem@smith.edu
Death, the “supreme and final crisis of life” (Malinowski), calls for collective understandings and communal responses. What care is due to the dying? What indicates that death has occurred? How is the corpse to be handled? The course uses ethnographic and historical sources to indicate how human communities have answered these questions, and to determine just how unusual are the circumstances surrounding dying in the contemporary Western world. Enrollment limited to 30.
Permission is required for interchange registration during the add/drop period only.