Is all death bad? What is it to die well? Is there really such a thing as a good death? What is its relation to a good life? Over the past few decades, a consensus has developed (mostly in North America) over the ‘good death’ model, though it has also received some criticism. Achieving a certain kind of death, one that involves choice, control, peacefulness and freedom from pain, has become established as an ideal– some say an ideology – of dying. Through readings of classical and contemporary ethnographies of death and dying across a range of cultures this course will explore how different cultures imagine a good death. We will try to examine the good death not as a universal psychological process but as a cultural and political one. Topics will include the purification of corpses, organ transplant, hospital dying and technological interventions into the end of life, hospice and palliative care, public deaths, sacrifice and martyrdom. This course will satisfy requirements in Reading and Doing.