Course Schedule and Catalog

Long Title: SOCIOLOGY OF THE LIFE CYCLE: DEATH AND DYING

Department: Sociology

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 3

Description: Analysis of various cultures' "death systems" (beliefs, values, conceptions). Religious, legal, medical and other approaches to death; analysis of funerary practices and various trajectories of the dying self; "near death experiences", social management of dying in various organizational settings (homes, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, prisons, battlefields, streets, etc.); changing causes and modes of death (accident, natural disaster, illness, "old age", suicide, homicide, genocide, and war). A field trip to Houston's Glenwood Cemetery, and special consideration of terrorism and the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia.