Examines the key place "death" occupied in the Victorian cultural and social imagination, using an interdisciplinary approach for its materials and for its method. The course will focus on literary and artistic portrayals of death and mourning, demographic and cultural change, the origins of medical epidemiology, the rise of spiritualism, and shifting views of the meaning of life and death in a modernizing world. Required materials, assignments, and experiential exercises (such as an excursion to Cambridge's Mount Auburn Cemetery) reinforce trans-Atlantic connections and the prevalence of cultural attitudes about death and mourning.