Religious Perspectives on Health, Death, and Dying

Course Description:

This course examines the dying process through different religions. We examine societal understandings of death, what current resources are available to care for the dying, religious approaches to the dying process and death, and possibilities for a healthy approach to the dying process. In this course we will examine various approaches to the dying process through the lens of different religions. We will look at the practices of care for the whole person leading up to death as well as rituals surrounding the death of the physical body. We will look at societal understandings of death, why death is feared, what current resources are available to care for the dying, religious approaches to the dying process and death, and ask whether there are other possibilities for a healthy approach to the dying process, one that allays fear.

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Major Topics:

• What is death?
• Why is there fear of death?
• Personal care for the dying (keeping person home) benefits to family and challenges
• Religious perspectives on end of life stages
• Retirement communities
• Old age homes
• Hospice
• Death Doula

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Major Texts:

Bregman, Lucy. Religion, Death, and Dying: Volume 1-3. Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger Publishers, 2010.

Bregman, Lucy. "Dying in Five Stages: Death and Emotions in Kübler-Ross and Her Influence." Pakistan Journal of Historical Studies, vol. 2 no. 2, 2017, p. 33-61. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/811922.

Fersko-Weiss, Henry. Caring for the Dying: The Doula Approach to a Meaningful Death. Newburyport, MA: Conari Press, an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC, 2017. Print.

Frank Arthur W. The Wounded Storyteller: Body Illness and Ethics. University of Chicago Press 1995.

Gawande, Atul, author. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. New York :Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2014.

Moreman, C. (Ed.). (2017). The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315723747.