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.