History 215
Death in America

Prof. Erik Seeman
Spring 2010                                     
T Th 9:30-10:50                                 
Knox 110                                     
                                

Office: Tues. 1-3
Park Hall 534
645-5648
seeman@buffalo.edu

Goals:  Because everyone must die, we are all fascinated with death--or at least a little curious about it.  But we live in a time when polite society frowns upon discussing death.  This course seeks to counter this reticence by examining death in America from before Columbus until today.  Through lectures, movies, music, slides, and the internet, we will investigate how people have thought about death throughout American history. We will examine sources such as diaries, letters, gravestones, and art to learn how attitudes toward death and dying have changed over the last several centuries.

UB Learns:  Go to UB Learns for study questions, lecture outlines, powerpoint images, and useful links.

Assignments:  Requirements for this class are attendance in lectures, ten one-paragraph response papers, two three-page papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

•Response papers:  These are due in lecture, ten Thursdays during the semester.  Each is simply a one-paragraph typed summary of the main ideas of that week’s reading(s).  The response papers will be graded either as “check” (acceptable) or “check minus” (unacceptable).  Each “check” is worth one point toward the possible total of ten.  Response papers will not be accepted late unless accompanied by a doctor’s note or other written excuse.  Submission by email attachment is not acceptable.  Any student who completes five or fewer acceptable response papers will receive an additional ten-point deduction from his or her final grade.

• Graveyard paper:  Visit a cemetery of your choice and write a three-page paper comparing and contrasting the death iconography of nineteenth- and twentieth-century gravestones.

• Interview paper:  Talk to an elderly friend or relative about how death and dying have changed during the person's lifetime.  Write a three-page paper on what you learned from this dialogue.

• Extra credit:  Write a two-page paper on a relevant movie, television show, or other artifact of contemporary popular culture relating it to the themes of the class.

Grading: Response papers:        1 point each, ten total
            Three-page papers:        15% each
            Midterm:                       20%
            Final exam:                   40%

Plagiarism Policy:  According to the UB Undergraduate Catalog, "Students are responsible for the honest completion and representation of their work, for the appropriate citation of sources, and for respect for others' academic endeavors.  By placing their name on academic work, students certify the originality of all work not otherwise identified by appropriate acknowledgments."  A student found to be in violation of these guidelines will receive a sanction appropriate to the severity of the infraction, up to and including receiving an "F" for the course.

Readings:  The following books are required reading and may be purchased at the University Bookstore.  They are also available through course reserve in the Undergraduate Library.  Everything else may be accessed through the UB Libraries online catalogue by clicking on “Course Reserve.”

Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One (orig. 1948; Boston, 1976)

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie:  An Old Man, A Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson (New York, 1997)


Week One:  Traditions I

Jan. 12:  Introduction

Jan. 14:  Seventeenth-Century West Africa

Readings:  Pieter de Marees, Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (1602), trans. Albert van Dantzig and Adam Jones (Oxford, 1987), 179-85


Week Two:  Traditions II

Jan. 19:  Early Modern Europe

Jan. 21:  Pre-contact Indians – response paper due in lecture

Readings:  Patricia E. Rubertone, Grave Undertakings:  Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians (Washington, D.C., 2001), 132-64


Week Three: Chesapeake Mortality

Jan. 26: Culture of Mortality

Jan. 28: Living With Death – response paper due in lecture

Readings: Carville V. Earle, “Environment, Disease, and Mortality in Early Virginia,” in The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1979), 96-125


Week Four: Puritan Death

Feb. 2: An Omnipotent God

Feb. 4: Iconography – response paper due in lecture

Readings: Gordon Geddes, Welcome Joy:  Death in Puritan New England (Ann Arbor, 1981), 103-25


Week Five:  The Eighteenth Century

Feb. 9:  The Great Awakening

Feb. 11:  Slave Funerals – response paper due in lecture

Readings:  Erik R. Seeman, Pious Persuasions:  Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth Century New England (Baltimore, 1999), 60-78  


Week Six:  Early Romanticism

Feb. 16:  Beautiful Death

Feb. 18:  Toward Disunion – response paper due in lecture

Readings:  Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains:  American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799-1883 (New Haven, 1996), 39-50

Mark S. Schantz, Awaiting the Heavenly Country:  The Civil War and America’s Culture of Death (Ithaca, 2008), 38-69


Week Seven:  The Civil War

Feb. 23:  Rise of Embalming

Feb. 25:  Midterm

Readings:  none


Week Eight:  The Victorian Age

Mar. 2:  Mourning Culture

Mar. 4:  Iconography – response paper due in lecture

Readings:  Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford, 1996), 284-99  


Week Nine:  Cities and Hospitals

Mar. 16:  The Mortality Transition

Mar. 18:  Twentieth-Century Iconography – response paper due in lecture

Readings:  Sheila M. Rothman, Living in the Shadow of Death:  Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History (Baltimore, 1994), 179-93


Week Ten:  The Great Wars

Mar. 23:  World War I

Mar. 25:  World War II and the Bomb – Graveyard paper due in lecture

Readings:  Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light:  American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York, 1985), 196-210  


Week Eleven:  The American Way of Death

Mar. 30:  Curbing Grief

Apr. 1:  Burial Practices – response paper due in lecture

Readings:  Waugh, The Loved One


Week Twelve:  Death Today I

Apr. 6:  The Death Penalty

Apr. 8:  Terror and Memorialization – response paper due in lecture

Readings: Mary E. Williams, ed., The Death Penalty:  Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego, 2002), 151-63, 173-83


Week Thirteen:  Death Today II

Apr. 13:  Physician-Assisted Suicide

Apr. 15:  A Death of One's Own – Interview paper due in lecture

Readings:  Bonnie Steinbock, et al., Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 7th ed. (Boston, 2009), 473-83, 511-29


Week Fourteen:  Death Today III

Apr. 20:  AIDS and the Hospice Movement

Apr. 22:  The Good Death Today – response paper due in lecture

Readings:  Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

Greg A. Sachs, M.D., “Sometimes Dying Still Stings,” Journal of the American Medical Association 284 (15 November 2000): 2423


Final Exam:  will be held at a time and place TBA.  It will be during exam period, April 29 to May 6.  Students are responsible for being available during that period.