IHP Death & Dying

Overview

Why a comparative study of death and dying?

To study death is to embark on a cultural exploration deep into the heart of people’s values, outlooks, dramas, and contestations. Death trespasses any attempt to separate it from our lives. In American public culture, death became separated from the social to the clinical where it could be hidden from view. The contradiction between this social taboo and its ever-presence leaves many Americans death illiterate, with limited functional knowledge of the process of death and dying, the psychology of bereavement and continuing bonds, end-of-life planning, or the role of aging and elders in a society. Our heightened death avoidance also stilts our ability to have sensitive conversations, as well as engage each other past the boundaries of culture. Death is not only the grim and the grisly (though it can be that too). Death can also be a love story, a community story, a social and economic negotiation, or a call to action. Studying death brings into view these wider aspects of the human experience. Travel to New York City and three countries where death is granted a social place: Ghana, Mexico, and Indonesia. Here, you will learn how cultural practices, social policies, and creative communities confront and rearrange the meanings of death.

Start in New York City where you will meet deathcare workers, dark tourism operators, community organizers, and spiritual leaders to understand death and dying on a neighborhood and national scale. In Ghana, expand the emotionality of death as you encounter how death may be viewed as a celebration of life, and learn how healthy deathways can help to address historical traumas. Your next stop is Mexico where you will witness the intermingling of Indigenous beliefs and Catholicism contribute to contemporary attitudes, rituals, and practices and how grassroots organizers advocate for people preparing to die. Lastly, in Indonesia, encounter a microcosm of world death cultures where the line between life and death grays through traditional forensic engagements with the body. Throughout the course, learn how death is managed within and beyond the clinic, how communities care for each other during times of death, and how to strengthen cultural competency and travel ethics as you have conversations over the more intimate–and exceptional–realm of people’s lives. 

Introduce yourself to death studies and explore death and dying around the world. Comparative death studies may support your goals in anthropology, sociology, art history, public health, philosophy and religion, psychology, medical humanities, and more.

Highlights

• Examine how different cultures conceptualize and rework the boundaries of death, dead, and dead-but-not-gone.
• Learn about the roots of death denial and the histories behinds our diverging attitudes today.
• Trace out chains of rites the dead body and their beloveds undergo in different communities.
• Expand the meaning of the craft of dying as you participate in cooking workshops, visit fantasy coffin makers, and meet death sculpture woodworkers.
• Interview changemakers fighting against necropolitical policies that preserve life for the privileged and perpetuate death for marginalized people.
• Visit archaeological sites where death cultures of the past continue to guide the living.
• Challenge the cultural stereotypes produced by death reform movements through active engagements with difference.
• Negotiate, critique, and grow in what it means to be an ethical traveler across our host communities.

Prerequisites

None.

Earn a Minor

Students studying on this SIT semester-length program can choose to simultaneously complete a minor, with no additional coursework or cost. At SIT, a minor is a minimum of 16 credits taken within a content area. This standout credential can help boost your future job or graduate school applications.

The global studies minor examines the interconnectedness of people, places, and systems across the world, exploring global issues through cultural, sociological, and historical lenses. The medical humanities minor explores the human experience through interdisciplinary study in literature, history, culture, philosophy, and the arts.