Summer 2016 – Researching Death and Wikis

This semester we will discuss Death as an academic topic of research. To be clear, this is not a class to cope with a specific death, but rather a class that seeks to explore the many different ways a category can be considered within academic research and to familiarize ourselves with the ways rhetoric allows us to talk about sensitive and difficult topics.

Rather than require a textbook, this site contains several great readings concerning various aspects of death, but the short semester places a larger burden on you to find the sources that are unique and useful to your desired topics under the umbrella topic for the class.The first portion of the semester focuses on a traditional research paper written in stages, I require this research to be re-imagined towards the end of the semester as a Wiki entry. You might be creating your own page on the class Wiki if you do not feel an adequate page exists, or you might be editing an existing page to make it more current or to add depth or detail it currently lacks. Since digital spaces like blogs and Wikis house a lot of current scholarship, I hope that this split focus on a traditional paper and a Wiki project will prepare you for the scholarship awaiting you in each of your fields.This website exists to house the various readings and useful links that will be necessary to complete the research process successfully, but it is used together with Brightspace (D2L), which is where the dropboxes will be housed. If you wish to learn more about me and my pedagogy, you can always check Grimm Prospects or follow me @GrimmProspects on Twitter. You can also see what exists on the class hashtag, #WhyDeathMatters, or consider adding your own material under the same hashtag to continue the conversation outside of the classroom.

Percy Lost in the Cosmos
Augustine City of God
Darwin Origin of Species
Harris Excerpt
Grimm Godfather Death

Songs about Death

Chris Thile and Sarah Jarosz “Footprints in the Snow” from Prairie Home Companion 30 January 2016.