Introduction (Jan. 12)

I. Syllabus
II. Purposes
III. Humor


Seventeenth-Century West Africa (Jan. 14)

I. Early West Africa        randomization
II. Religion                        polytheism
III. Death Practices          subfloor burials
    A. Archaeology            Yoruba
    B. Grave Goods            Pieter de Marees
    C. Ethnography            Ghana


Early Modern Europe (Jan. 19)

I. Catholic Background
II. The Black Death
III. Ars Moriendi
IV. Burial Practices

purgatory, limbo
Requiem
macabre
extreme unction
charnel house; ossuary
"ad sanctos" burial
 

Pre-contact Indians (Jan. 21)

I. Mississippian Culture
II. Cahokia
III. Hurons
IV. Narragansetts

 
litter
Great Sun
"in-group retainer sacrifice"
Jesuit Relations
disarticulated
Ossosané
Cautantowwit


Culture of Mortality  (Jan. 26)

I. Protestant Reformation
II. Changes in Burials
III. Columbian Exchange
IV. Jamestown's Early Years
V. Culture of Mortality
VI. Social Fluidity

Martin Luther, John Calvin
Sola Scriptura
virgin soil epidemic
syphilis
Powhatan
oligohaline, mesohaline, polyhaline
typhoid, dysentery

 

Living With Death  (Jan. 28)

I. Gender Relations
    A. Marriage
    B. Widowhood
II. Family Life
III. Burial Practices
IV. Violence and Indians
V. Indentured Servitude
VI. Transition to Slavery

Sarah Harrison
"widowarchy"
"now-wife"
Pocahontas
John Rolfe


An Omnipotent God  (Feb. 2)

I. Puritanism in England
II. Profile of Migrants
III. Puritanism in New England
IV. Social Stability
V. "Infant Damnation"

Catharine of Aragon
Anne Boleyn
William Laud
Cotton Mather
Jonathan Edwards


 

Iconography  (Feb. 4)

I. Funerals
II. Iconography
 
cerecloth
bier
pall
death's head
epitaph


Great Awakening  (Feb. 9)

I. Funerals
II. Mourning
III. Deathbed Scenes
IV. Increasing Mortality
V. Great Awakening

lutestring
Elizabeth Holyoke
George Whitefield
liminality

 

Slave Funerals  (Feb. 11)

I. Middle Passage
II. 18th-Century Developments
III. Afro-Christianity
IV. 19th-Century Burial Practices
V. Flight and Rebellion

coffles
barracoons
Barbados
Ghana
transmigration
Chloe Spear
sankofa
Nat Turner



Beautiful Death  (Feb. 16)

I. Romanticism
II. Iconography
III. Second Great Awakening
IV. Death Practices
V. Beautiful Death
VI. Mourning Portraiture

soul effigy
Cane Ridge, Kentucky
burned-over district
Charles Grandison Finney
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Little Eva
 

Toward Disunion  (Feb. 18)

I. The Grotesque
II. Rural Cemeteries
III. Origins of the Civil War
IV. Death in the Civil War

George Lippard
Edgar Allan Poe
"Berenice"
miasma
animalcules
Mount Auburn


Rise of Embalming  (Feb. 23)

I. Battlefield Photography
II. Gettysburg Address
III. Washington and Lincoln
IV. Rise of Embalming

daguerreotype
Mathew Brady
Alexander Gardner
John Wilkes Booth
Jean Nicolas Gannal


Mourning Culture  (Mar. 2)

I. Historical Context
II. Rise of Undertakers
III. Spiritualism
IV. Victorian Mourning Culture

social darwinism
laissez-faire government
Hydesville, NY
Mary Todd Lincoln
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
The Gates Ajar (1869)
bombazine, crepe
 
 
 

Iconography  (Mar. 4)

I. Victorian Mourning Culture
II. Criticism and Parody
III. Mourning Photography
IV. Iconography

Timothy S. Arthur
Emmeline Grangerford
Stephen Dowling Bots
Green-Wood Cemetery
obelisk
Blocher memorial



The Mortality Transition  (Mar. 16)

I. Debate Over Causes
II. Urbanization
    A. Catholics
    B. Jews
    C. Death in the Cities
III. The Sanitary Revolution
IV. Rise of Hospitals

shiva
Louis Pasteur
Robert Koch
tuberculosis, diphtheria
Joseph Lister
dispensary
carbolic acid (phenol)
 
 
 

Twentieth-Century Iconography  (Mar. 18)

I. Tuberculosis
II. Race, Class, and Disease
III. Mortality Transition
IV. Iconography

tubercle bacillus
Robert Koch
sanitorium
Bauhaus
Weimar, Germany
art deco


World War One  (Mar. 23)

I. Jazz Funerals
II. First World War
III. Influenza Epidemic, 1918
IV. War and Literature

benevolent societies
Fort Riley, Kansas
Treaty of Versailles
Erich Maria Remarque
Ernest Hemingway
 
 
 

World War Two  (Mar. 25)

I. WWI and Literature
II. Second World War
III. The Atomic Bomb
IV. U.S. Response
V. Living With the Bomb
VI. The Bomb Today

Aldous Huxley
Hiroshima
Nagasaki
Bataan Death March


Curbing Grief  (Mar. 30)

I. Historical Changes
II. Grief and Mourning
III. Medicalization
IV. Funeral Directors

Amy Vanderbilt
Geoffrey Gorer
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Fit-A-Fut Oxford
 
 

Burial Practices  (Apr. 1)

I. Cemeteries
     A. Landscape-Lawn Plan
     B. Memorial Parks
II. Pet Cemeteries
III. Parody and Criticism
IV. Cremation
V. Burial Today

Adolph Strauch
Glendale
Hubert Eaton
potter's field
Jessica Mitford
Henry Laurens
mausoleums


The Death Penalty  (Apr. 6)

I. History
II. Supreme Court Decisions
III. Public Opinion
IV. Death Row

George Kendall
Furman v. Georgia (1972)
William Brennan
Gregg v. Georgia (1976)
David Baldus
McClesky v. Kemp (1987)
Wili Otey


Terror and Memorialization  (Apr. 8)

I. World War One
II. Vietnam Veterans Memorial
III. September 11

Thiepval
Battle of the Somme
Maya Lin


Physician-Assisted Suicide  (Apr. 13)

I. History
II. Concerns Today
III. "Right to Die"
IV. Jack Kevorkian

euthanasia
Hippocrates
Karen Ann Quinlan
Kathleen Foley
Dax Cowart
Derek Humphry
Hemlock Society
Timothy Quill
 

A Death of One's Own (Apr. 15)

Jim Witcher
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
Kitty Rayl
Death with Dignity Act



AIDS and Hospice  (Apr. 20)

I. History of AIDS
II. Impact
III. History of Hospice
IV. Impact

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)
pneumocystis (PCP)
Kaposi's sarcoma (KS)
Legionnaire's disease
Fred Phelps
antiretroviral (ARV) therapy
Cicely Saunders
Florence Wald

 
 

The Good Death Today  (Apr. 22)

I. History
II. Dying Today
   A. Morrie Schwartz
   B. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin
   C. A New Orthodoxy?

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)