Learning How to Die

Crosslistings: BPRO 22000

Death is inevitable, universal, and largely unspoken. “Learning How to Die” examines how individuals and societies confront the end of life—and how cultural narratives, medical institutions, and systems of care shape what that confrontation makes possible. Co-taught across literary studies and medical sociology, the course explores dying as both an existential problem and a socially organized process, shaped by the languages we use, the stories we tell, and the structures of care that support or constrain us. Readings include philosophical reflections on mortality, first-person accounts of terminal illness, and ethnographic analyses of medical communication, prognostic cultures, caregiving labor, and the social distribution of vulnerability. By placing narrative form in dialogue with clinical and institutional practice, the course investigates how people “learn” to die—how they make meaning under conditions of finitude, negotiate uncertainty, and develop shared frameworks for witnessing, articulating, and supporting the end of life.

Prerequisites
Third- or fourth-year standing.