NEH Enduring Questions Course on Grief and Mourning

FAIN: AQ-248275-16

Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles, CA 90045-2623)
Anna Harrison (Project Director: September 2015 to April 2018)

The development and teaching of a new upper-division core course for undergraduates on grief and mourning.

No one person’s experience of loss is like any other; however, there is reason to suppose that grief and mourning are fundamental aspects of human life, meriting sustained scrutiny in the classroom. The course, “Grief and Mourning,” tackles the enduring question “why and how do human beings grieve and mourn the dead?” The research and development of the proposed course topic will explore grief and mourning in the western Christian Middle Ages, Victorian England and America, and in modern African American cultures. Developed in collaboration with Student Affairs staff, the course will facilitate thinking about the expression of grief in a variety of contexts and among a broadly inclusive intellectual community of students, staff, faculty, and residents in the surrounding area. It will be offered in the upper-division Core Curriculum and open to students from every major and concentration.