Entry requirements

General entry requirements

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of the course, the student is expected to be able to:

• critically analyse social-scientific, humanistic and historical writings;
• reflect on and assess the interplay of meanings of private and collective loss and grief;
• evaluate potential sources of historical and ethnographic information;
• conduct interviews with individuals about how they make sense of their lived experience;
• speak and write, with attention to detail and incongruity, about individuals' engagement with loss and grief.

Content

To be human is to lose relationships, dreams, beloved individuals. During pandemics, war and other crises, we face loss together. How can private grief help us ponder collective loss, and vice versa? How do we make sense of possible human extinction due to thermonuclear war, climate calamity or a synthesized pathogen? Can grief enable us to protect our world? The course explores the meanings and power of loss via historical and contemporary thinkers, case studies, in-class interviews with invited guests, and students' own research projects.

Instruction

Course instruction takes the form of participatory lectures, students' prepared interviews with invited guests, discussions of the literature, practical exercises, and an analytical research project that is presented to the class. Before each course meeting, there are required reading assignments. Each student will, during the course of one week, be part of an interview team with other students, and through a literature search and development of interview questions, prepare an interview with an invited guest. The analytical written assignment can be done as a group project or solo, concluding with an oral presentation. The course is taught in English.

Assessment

The course is assessed on the basis of active participation in the weekly class meetings (0 credits, but required in order to pass the course) and the final oral (4 credits) and written (3,5 credits) assignments.

Grading scale for seminars: Fail-Pass (U-G). Grading scale for all other assessed components: Fail-Pass-Pass with distinction (U-G-VG).

If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University's disability coordinator.

Other regulations

Good reading and speaking skills in English are required. The student must be capable of working independently throughout the course.

Transitional provisions

Students retain the right to be examined on the course according to this syllabus for 3 semesters after their course instance has ended. Normally, instruction will be given according to the latest version of the course syllabus only.