Few, if any, causes of death are as silenced, solitary, and stigmatized as a death of suicide. This course has been designed as a means of examining suicide rigorously and meaningfully, and it will interrogate suicide in a thanatological context across disciplines within the humanities, health care, and the social sciences. Utilizing a psychosocial approach to the study of suicide – that is, an understanding of suicide as produced both by one’s psychological development within and one’s social relationship to their environment – we will address the unique culture of suicide that has arisen in recent decades. The five essential problems that this course seeks to address are:
(1) ascertaining the origins of the rise in preoccupation with suicide as
seen through public media, as well as documented, increased suicide attempts,
completions, and bereavements across recent decades;
(2) determining the ways in which grieving suicide is complicated by the degree to which survivors or the public are able to make meaning of these deaths, simultaneous to psychiatric theories uncovering the importance of meaning making in unresolved grief;
(3) interrogating the cultural intersections of power and privilege which alter suicide risk and interventions for members of disenfranchised groups;
(4) examining the ethical and historical implications of cultural representations of suicidality, suicide deaths, and suicide bereavement; and
(5) exploring the future implications and practical applications of suicidology in diverse professional disciplines.
Therefore, this course will trace attitudes toward suicide as they develop from classical to postmodern understandings through readings of texts drawn from literature, film, government, public health, psychology, sociology, and thanatology. Through psychosocial study, we will explore the changing attitudes toward individuals who ideate, attempt, or complete suicide as well as cultural understandings of suicide as a phenomenon. By incorporating integrated approaches to examining suicide through multiple disciplinary fields, we may begin to achieve an appropriate understanding of both suicide and the suicidal individual.
Each of the texts and topics we will engage is situated within the complexity of suicide loss; unpacking these topics through analysis and discussion may provide us with a greater understanding of suicide loss in our culture, the spectrum of responses to suicide, and the empathy required to bear witness to the losses of those around us. Many of the topics we discuss in class will be difficult, but by studying and talking about these topics, we may become more attuned, thoughtful and emotionally intelligent individuals who value an “education for life.” Ours is an empathic, supportive, student-centered virtual classroom. You will be held to high standards in terms of your commitment to the course and the work you produce.
- Instructor: Sara Murphy