| Unit name | Death |
|---|---|
| Unit code | HIST30017 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Cervantes |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
NONE |
| Co-requisites |
NONE |
| School/department | Department of History (Historical Studies) |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Death is an experience unique to everyone yet common to all. Societies traditionally invest time, thought and money into preparing for death and remembering those who have passed. This unit will introduce students to an exciting and challenging concept – studying the living by their relationship with the dead. Students may be asked to focus on a particular period in time, or a particular religious or cultural phenomenon associated with death. This may include religious attitudes toward death and the afterlife, the supernatural, suicide, burial rites, veneration of the dead, artistic and literary representations of the dead, medicine and healthcare, warfare, capital punishment, or the concept of ‘dying to the world’.
On successful completion of this unit students will have developed 1. a broad historical knowledge of the perceived interaction between the living and the dead in a given historical period; 2. a deeper awareness of how to approach a long term historical analysis; 3. the ability to set individual issues within their longer term historical context; 4. the ability to critically analyse and generalise about issues of continuity and change; 5. the ability to select pertinent evidence/data in order to illustrate/demonstrate more general historical points; 6. the ability to derive benefit from and contribute effectively to large group discussion; 7. the ability to identify a particular academic interpretation, evaluate it critically and form an individual viewpoint; 8. the acquisition of advanced writing, research, and presentation skills.
One 1-hour introductory session followed by five 2-hour classes.
24-hour written examination (summative, 100%)
Ariés, Phillipe, The Hour of Our Death (London, 1981) Bertram, Jerome (ed.), Monumental Brasses as Art and History (Stroud, 1996) Cantor, Norman F., In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made (New York, 2001). Delumeau, Jean, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th to 18th Centuries (New York, 1990). Harvey, Barbara, Living and Dying in Medieval England: The Monastic Experience (Oxford, 1993) Hockey, Jenny et. al., Grief, Mourning and Death Ritual, (Buckingham, 2001) Westerhof, Danielle, Death and the Noble Body, (Woodbridge, 2008)
