Sections offered SPRING 2019:
#12025 |
FREDERIC LIEBER |
MW 11:15am-12:30pm |
HU 111 |
CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd S&H credit; COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
Thanks to advances in medical science, many people with terminal illness are living reasonably well in the last months and years of their lives. One way they have found meaning in the final stage of life is writing about their dying – in blogs, books, newspaper and magazine columns, and letters. Dying has become a genre and a new kind of living. This course will examine the work of four people who faced the end of life with clarity and conviction and in so doing found their way into the lives of others.
We study the autobiography of dying from three perspectives: personal, philosophical, and social. Questions include: How has this new stage of life demystified dying? What themes emerge among the authors? What can we learn about the end of life that may help others? What does the experience of dying tell us about living?
We read Gratitude by Oliver Sacks, Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, Jenny Diski’s In Gratitude, and Living-with-Cancer, a blog by Bloomington journalist and historian Carrol Krause.
Students write short papers on each reading, and a final paper on a topic of their choice. The class is conducted as a seminar, based on discussion. There are no exams.