Death in America

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The Senior Seminar is designed as a culminating experience for American Studies majors, an opportunity to hone the skills, methods, and interests acquired in previous American Studies classes and direct them toward a specific and significant research project. Readings and assignments explore themes in the field of American Studies. Requirements include seminar-style discussions of course readings, a final research paper of 20-25 pages (or the equivalent), and a presentation of that project in class. This Senior Seminar focuses on changing cultural understandings of death, dying, and mourning in modern and contemporary America. Examining different visual, material, and media cultures, it explores topics such as: permanent and temporary memorials (like crosses erected at the sites of roadside fatalities, "ghost bikes" left at the scenes of pedestrian fatalities, and "dead-man" t-shirts worn at funerals), funeral practices and cemeteries (including traditional cemeteries, virtual cemeteries, "green" cemeteries, and Living Monuments), death related humor (too soon?), dark tourism (visiting sites of tragic and traumatic death), death-related rituals (Day of the Dead), dead bodies and sensational exhibitions like Body Worlds, Deadheads, death metal, and forensic-based TV shows like CSI and Bones. Our objectives are to consider what death means in America today on cultural terms. Course includes field trips.