RELG 145 — Religion, Death, and the Afterlife
This course will explore how human beings understand, ritualize, and find meaning in mortality across diverse religious traditions. This course will examine the differences between medical and spiritual definitions of death; practices surrounding dying and grief; and diverse conceptions of the afterlife-from reincarnation and resurrection to ancestral presence, heaven, hell, and non-existence. This course covers the beliefs, practices and artistic traditions surrounding death in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. Artworks that will examined in conjunction with these traditions will include poetry, song, chants, gravestones and paintings that have helped reconcile practitioners to the inevitability of death. The course encourages critical reflection on one of the most universal yet culturally varied dimensions of human experience. (CSU)