Professor: Rosanne Martorella, Ph.D. Office: Science Bldg. 348 Office Hours: Posted on door Phone: (201) 595-2388 Fax: (201) 595-3522 Email: romartin@frontier.wpunj.edu Listserv: SOC330@frontier.wpunj.edu Homepages: William Paterson University of New Jersey / Department of Sociology / sch-hmss/ sociology/ |
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Most students ask me, "Is this course depressing?" The answer, undoubtedly, is-"No." In fact, it is a course about life! By learning about the meanings given to death by different cultures, and the kinds of institutions that care for the dying, we come to grips with our own immortality, and are sensitized to those with terminal disease. This has become a popular course. Once a taboo subject, college students want to discuss and come to terms with the difficult and complex issues surrounding the nature of disease and death in society, and the care for the terminally ill.
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Jacques Louis David The Death of Socrates, 1787 |
In many ways, the AIDS crisis and its ensuing movement, have brought the issues to the foreground as more individuals facing terminal and long term illness reach out to talk about their illness. Such diseases are widespread today. Mortality statistics on teen suicide, war, homicide, etc. has made death ever more present in most people's lives.
This course begins with an introduction on the meaning of death throughout history and among different cultural traditions. Major social problems are analyzed and include teenage suicide, AIDS, and bio-ethical concerns in the treatment of the terminally ill. Ethical issues include informed consent, the Dying Patient's Bill of Rights, the Living Will, the Health Care Proxy, etc. A large component of this course is the social epidemiology of death which focuses on the psycho-social risks factors which impact on mortality and cancer is seen as a "social disease."
The course also discusses the care of the terminally ill, stages of dying, and the institutions that care for the dying. Students will also visit a funeral home, and conduct reports based on The Death of Marat (Jacques Louis David, 1793, exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York), funerary tombstones and epitaphs found in a colonial cemetery near their home.
