Subject Area: Sociology and Anthropology

This course explores from anthropological and sociological perspectives how everyday experience, throughout life, is shaped by natality and mortality. The course will provide you with a lens into the cross-cultural diversity of experiences of living and dying. Key topics in the course may include organ transplantation, palliative care, and the cultural importance of metaphors of birth and death. By the end of this course, you will have developed an appreciation for the key conceptual issues pertinent to the study of living and dying, including love, grief, abandonment, care, otherness, and the uniqueness and connectedness of each life.