Reinterpretations of Time and Death

Undergraduate / Graduate

This class will explore philosophical, religious and literary reimaginings and reconceptualizations of the nature of time and of death. Of special concern will be both conceptual and imaginative speculations that contravene commonsensical notions such as 1) time as a sequence of nonconsecutive and nonoverlapping "moments," 2) time as unidirectional, 3) time as uninterrupted, 4) time as synordinate, 5) time as nonrepeating, 6) death as either the end of individual consciousness or the continuation of individual consciousness, 7) death as either leading to consequences of the life lived or having no such consequences, and so on. Readings may include the following: Borges, "A New Refutation of Time," Amis, Time's Arrow; Baker The Fermata; Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five; Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra; Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives; and Ziporyn, Death Time Perception (in progress), among others.