Death in the Digital

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Death comes to all of us eventually. This course will examine the role of digital technologies in shaping our understanding of death and dying in the networked world. As scanning and simulation technologies make us increasingly knowledgeable about the body's fragility, entertainment media like video games and digital animation offer new ways to play with dying and killing. Rapidly spreading social media circulates news and images of death in record time while simultaneously preserving the lives of the departed in the form of profiles and online memorials. Of particular interest during our study will be the unequal distribution of death across the population. Death comes to all of us, but not at the same time. Race, disability, class, gender, and geographical location leave people vulnerable to death at different rates. Can understanding the role of technology in our contemporary death worlds help us to intervene in these injustices?