Service Learning Course Details

This course will discuss issues related to the experience of death, dying, loss and bereavement through a multi and cross-cultural lens of race, class and gender. The course will explore the historical and contemporary issues around community and individual health, life expectancy, mortality, and morbidity rates, as well as geographic, social and cultural aspects of loss. Students will explore the impact of the intersectionality of race, class, and gender, social justice, equity and access in lives of diverse communities as it pertains to loss. Topics include attitudes about death, loss in the lives of adults and children, modes of death, death and loss rituals within cultures and communities, suicide, violence, trauma, illness, disease, living wills, funeral plans as well as historical and current practices and trends in health care. Three class hours.