AMST 3620: Life and Death in America

3 Credit Hours

This course introduces students to the historical and contemporary issues surrounding birth and death in the United States. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course surveys methods, concepts, and frameworks relevant to understanding birth, death, and life in between as human rites of passage within various historical, cultural, ethnic, and ethical contexts. Students engage in the close reading of scholarly work, learn and practice a variety of research methods, and analyze historical sources.

Course Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

1. Articulate how the historical handling of births and deaths both reflects and constructs collective meanings about the human body in the United States.

2. Analyze how race, gender, disability, and other categorizations of the body affect the cultural evaluation of births and the dead.

3. Demonstrate historical and research literacy in locating and analyzing appropriate primary and secondary sources, including visual materials.

4. Produce various kinds of formal and informal academic writing, including: reading responses, personal reflections, public blog posts, and image analyses.

5. Engage in scholarly discussions through written and oral means.

6. Produce a well-supported and thoughtfully-argued research paper on a course topic.