Order Description
Hi Below is the description about the essay.
Assignment
Research Essay
2000 words Submit your essay through Canvas.
For your essay you may either choose from one of the questions below or a research essay in your own area of choice. Remember that you need to critically explore the question. All answers should show evidence of informed reading and critical evaluation of what you have read.
Academic peer review references
Ensure that your references are peer-reviewed. Academic peer-review is a process used to ensure that academic work (scholarly books and articles) is evaluated by a number of experts in the discipline to confirm that the necessary academic standards have been met before it is published. Peer review looks at the quality of the scholarship, the accuracy of the work, the relevance to the discipline and its contribution to knowledge. Many on-line and off line publications do not use peer review and may rely on unverified sources or the judgements and opinions of the author. Sites like Wikipedia and other general information sites can be very useful in giving you an overall sense of the topic and leads to verifiable peer-review sites but are not peer-review sites in themselves and at this level of scholarship should not be cited in your references. There is a huge peer review literature associated with the topics in this course and one of the ways you demonstrate scholarship is by finding and using scholarly sources.
How many books/articles should I use?
While a good essay could be written with relatively few references it is important at this level of university study to be able to demonstrate that you are able to locate, identify and effectively use academic resources that align with your topic or question. I would expect a minimum of 6-10 references though some students will draw on significantly more.
Personal experience
The use of personal experience is often valuable in a course of this type but you must ensure that there is a balance between the intellectual, the analytical, the statistical, the discursive and the experiential. All essays should be correctly referenced with a complete bibliography.
Note: I do not mind which referencing system you use but you must be consistent. PLEASE KNOW WHICH REFERENCING SYSTEM YOU ARE USING ON YOUR COVER SHEET.
1. We cannot fully understand our relationship to death by treating it as a discrete component of life that can be separated off from other social phenomena. Look at one culture’s death system and illustrate and analyse the way that the meaning of death has changed over time.
2. Drawing on Ariès discuss the way that death changes over time and relate this to social, political and economic changes.
3. Is Ernest Becker correct in arguing that the terror of death shapes societal attitudes. What are the different emotional and intellectual responses to death and how significant do you think they are?
4. How does religion shape the way we understand death? Explain giving examples from one or more religions. Ensure that you demonstrate the societal effects of belief systems.
5. Norbert Elias discusses what he sees as the special features of contemporary society that shape the image and the way that death is understood in our society. Discuss and critically examine one or more of these features.
6. Why is death ‘the scandal of reason’? Use this answer to critically examine the idea that death in modernity is characterised by an attitude of death denial.
7. Does death in popular culture effectively allow us to examine our own mortality? Discuss drawing on both theory and examples.
Possible areas of research
Death and Popular culture
Representation of death in TV hospital dramas/police shows
Death ritual/customs/rites of passage
Changing faces of death
Death and Gender
Death and Ethnicity
Death and Class
Death and Culture
Death and Literature
Death and Manga
Death Video Games
Death in the Nuclear Age
Death and War
Death and the Arts
Death and Modernity
Death and the Internet
Death and Disaster
Death and Celebrity
Death and Technology
Death and Social Policy
Death Prevention
Death Tourism
Genocide
Grief and Grieving
The Good Death
Medicalization of Death
Memorialisation of Death
Suicide
Murder
Social Death
Body Maintenance/Aging
Death and Sexuality
Social Stratification of Death
Religious representations
Euthanasia
Living with AIDS
Apocalyptic Movements
Epitaphs, Requiem and Last Words
This is just suggestion list of readings. I wanted to show you. I will upload around ten or more. But if you want specific readings to upload from this I can do that right away.
Suggested Readings
Aberth, J. (2005), The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348 – 1350. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.
Adorno, T. (1978) Minima moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life. (trans.) E F N Jephcott, Verso, London.
Arendt, H. (1961), The Origins of Totalitarianism, George Allen and Unwin Ltd: London.
Arendt, H. (1963), Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, London: Faber and Faber.
Askin, K. D. (1997), War Crimes Against Women, The Hague: Kluwer Law International.
Ariès P (1981) The Hour of Our death. Alfred Knopf, New York.
Bartov, O. (ed.) (2000), The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath, London: Routledge.
Baudrillard J (1976) L’Echange Symbolique et la Mort. Gallimond, Paris.
Bauman Z (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Bauman Z (1990) Modernity and Ambivalence. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Bauman Z (1992) Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Bauman Z (1992) ‘Survival as a Social Construct’ in Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 11:4.
Becker E (1973) The Denial of Death. Free Press, New York.
Blank, R. & Merrick, J. (2005), End of Life Decision Making: A Cross-National Study, Cambridge: MIT Press.
Bourke, J. (1999), An Intimate History of Killing, London: Granta Books.
Bowker J (1991) The Meanings of Death. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Browning, C. R. (1995), The Path to Genocide, New York: Canto.
Cannandine D (1981) ‘War and Death: Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain’ in Mirrors of Mortality, J Whaler (ed.), Bedford Square Press, London.
Chalcraft D J (1993) “Weber, Wagner and Thoughts of Death; in Sociology, vol. 27:3.
Charmaz K (1980) The Social Reality of Death. Addison-Wesley Read, Massachusetts.
Clark D (ed) (1993) The Sociology of Death. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.
Counts D and Counts D (eds) (1991) Coping with the Final Tragedy: Cultural Variation in Dying and Grieving. Baywood Publishing, New York.
Cunningham-Burley, S. & Backett- Milburn, K. (2001) Exploring the Body, New York: Palgrave.
Cunningham-Burley, S. & Watson, N. (2001) Reframing the Body, New York: Palgrave.
Davis, M. (2001), Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World, London: Verso.
De Castro, J. (1977), The Geopolitics of Hunger, Boston: Little & Brown.
Depue, R. (2005), Between Good and Evil: A Master Profiler’s Hunt for Society’s Most Violent Predators, New York: Warner .
Destexhe, A. (1995) Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, London: Pluto Press.
De Waal, A. (2005), Famine that Kills: Dafur, Sudan, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Doore G (ed) (1990) What Survives?: Contemporary Explorations of Life After Death. Jeremy P Archer Inc, Los Angeles.
Elias N (1985) The Loneliness of Dying. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Elster, J. (ed) (2005), The Death Penalty, Sandiego: Greenhaven.
Enright D J (1983) The Oxford Book of Death, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Etcheson, C. (2005), After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide, Westport: Praeger.
Featherstone M (1991) ‘The Body in Consumer Culture’ in The Body, Featherstone et al (eds), Sage Publications, London.
Featherstone M and Hepworth M (1991) ‘The Mask of Ageing and the Postmodern Life Course’ in The Body, Featherstone et al. (eds), Sage Publications, London.
Feifel H (ed) (1989) The Meaning of Death, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York.
Feuerbach L (1980) Thoughts on Death and Immortality. University of California Press, Berkley.
Fraser, M. & Greco, M. (eds.) (2005, The Body: A Reader, London: Routledge.
Freud S (1991) Sigmund Freud: Civilization, Society and Religion. Penguin Books, London.
Gane M (1991) Baudrillard’s Bestiary. Routlege, London.
Geddes, J. (ed.) (2001), Evil after Postmodernism: Histories, Narratives, and Ethics, London: Routledge.
Gorer G (1965) Death, Grief and Mourning in Contemporary Britain. Cresset, London.
Gottlieb, R. (ed), (1991), Thinking the Unthinkable: Meanings of the Holocaust, New York: Paulist Press.
Gourevitch, P. (1998), We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, London: Picador.
Hass, K. (1998), Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hayslip, B. (2005), Cultural Changes and Attitudes Toward Death, Dying and Bereavement, New York: Springer.
Ihimaera, W. (1973), Tangi, Auckland: Heinemann.
Kalish R (1980) Death, Dying, Transcending, Baywood Publishing Company Inc., New York.
Kearl M (1989) Endings: A Sociology of Death and Dying, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Killilea A (1988) The Politics of Being Mortal. The University Press of Kentucky, Kentucky.
Kastenbaum R and Kastenbaum B (1989) Encyclopedia of Death. Oryx Press, Phoenix, Arizona.
Kastenbaum R (1991) Death, Society and Human Experience. (4th ed), Macmillan Publishing, New York.
Kramer, M. (1990), ‘The Moral Logic of the Hizballah’ in W.Reich (ed) Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kremmer, S. L. (2001), Women’s Holocaust Writing: Memory and Imagination, Licoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Kriger, N. (ed) (2005), Embodying Inequality: Epidemiologic Perspectives, Amityville: Baywood.
Kubler-Ross E (1970) On Death and Dying. Tavistock, LondonMarcuse H (1959) ‘The Ideology of Death’ in The Meaning of Death. H Feifel (ed), McGraw-Hill, New York.
Levi, P. (1996), Survival in Auschwitz (If This is a Man), trans. S. Woolf, New York: Touchstone.
Levi, P. (1989), The Drowned and the Saved, trans. R. Rosenthal, New York: Vintage.
Levi, P. (1985), Moments of Reprieve, trans. R. Feldman, London: Abacus.
Levinas, E. (1998), On Thinking – Of – The – Other: Entre Nous, trans. Michael B. Smith & Barbara Harshav, London: The Athlone Press.
Lifton, R. J. (2000), The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, New York: Basic Books.
Mellor P (1993) ‘Death in high modernity: the contemporary presence and absence of death’ in The Sociology of Death, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.
Metcalf, P. & Huntington, R. (1991), Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Motuary Ritual, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mobberly, C. (2002), Death and Body Parts: Changing Perspectives and the Maori Dimension, Auckland: Auckland University Thesis.
Noys, B. (2005), The Culture of Death, Oxford: Berg.
O’Brien, T. (1990), The Things They Carried, London: Flamingo.
Ofer, D. & Weitzman, L. (eds.) (1998), Women in the Holocaust, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Oppenheim, R. (1965), Maori Death Customs, Auckland: Auckland University Thesis.
Owen, W. (1983), Wilfred Owens: The Complete Poems and Fragments, London: Chatto & Windus.
Procter, R. (1988), Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Prunier, G. (1995) The Rwanda Crisis 1959-1994: History of a Genocide, London: Hurst & Company.
Rees, L. (2005), Auschwitz: A New History, New York: Public Affairs.
Rittner, C. & Roth, J. (eds.) (1993), Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust, New York: Paragon House.
Robine, J-M. (2003), determining Health Expectancies, Chicester, N.J.: J. Wiley
Russell,C. (1995), Narrative Mortality: Death, Closure and New Wave Cinemas, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Scarry, E. (1985), The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, New York: Oxford University Press.
Scheper-Hughes, N. (1992), Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sofsky, W. (1993) The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stephenson J (1985) Death, Grief and Mourning: Individual and Social Realities. Free Press, New York.
Turner, D. (19630, Tangi, introduction by R. Oppenheim, Wellington: Reed.
Walter T (1991) ‘Modern Death: Taboo or not Taboo?’ in Sociology, 25:293-310.
Young, J. (1990), Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
