Before there was a death care industry where professional funeral directors offered embalming and other services, residents of the Arkansas Ozarks--and, for that matter, people throughout the South--buried their own dead. Every part of the complicated, labor-intensive process was handled within the deceased's community. This process included preparation of the body for burial, making a wooden coffin, digging the grave, and overseeing the burial ceremony, as well as observing a wide variety of customs and superstitions.

These traditions, especially in rural communities, remained the norm up through the end of World War II, after which a variety of factors, primarily the loss of manpower and the rise of the funeral industry, brought about the end of most customs.

"Gone to the Grave," a meticulous autopsy of this now vanished way of life and death, documents mourning and practical rituals through interviews, diaries and reminiscences, obituaries, and a wide variety of other sources. Abby Burnett covers attempts to stave off death; passings that, for various reasons, could not be mourned according to tradition; factors contributing to high maternal and infant mortality; and the ways in which loss was expressed though obituaries and epitaphs. A concluding chapter examines early undertaking practices and the many angles funeral industry professionals worked to convince the public of the need for their services.

Mourning and memorialization are at the very centre of literary culture. They take on forms deeply resonant of the sundry traditions of poetic elegy even when those elegiac conventions are displaced, concealed, or plainly unintentional. For all of its pervasiveness, however, the "elegy" remains remarkably ill-defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a sign of a lament for the dead. This Handbook is the single most comprehensive study of its subject. It provides both a historical survey and a thematic engagement with the relevant issues in elegy. It is responsive to a pressing need for clarification of the relevant issues, and to the exciting developments currently under way in elegy studies.
Such a volume is especially timely, since in recent years there has been a veritable explosion in interest in elegies about AIDS, cancer, and war; various reconsiderations of the role of women in the history of elegiac writing; and readings of elegy in relation to ethics, philosophy and theory, and political structure.
With 38 chapters by leading specialists, ranging from Gregory Nagy's reconsideration of Ancient Greek elegy through Stuart Curran's novel engagement with Romantic elegiac hybridity, and on to Elizabeth Helsinger's consideration of elegy and painting, this Handbook offers groundbreaking scholarship and remarkable historical breadth.

Between Poverty and the Pyre examines the history of the experience of widowhood across different cultures. It brings together a collection of essays by historians, anthropologists and philologists. The book shows how difficult it is to define the 'typical' widow, as the experiences of these women have differed so widely, not simply because of their different time periods and locations, but also becuase of their varying legal and religious status and economic conditions.
The study is diverse with subjects ranging from:
*Hindu wives who followed their husbands to the pyre
*widows who were burned as witches
*and widows who had to become prostitutes to stay alive.
The book also explores Jesus's interest in widows and the experience of some well-known widows, such as Mohammed's first wife.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203036980

This stimulating and thought-provoking book is focused on the various spaces, places and material culture with which people come into contact when dealing with death. It covers the disciplinary perspectives of anthropology, history, sociology and theology and its scope, ranges across the spaces in hospitals where death occurs, to the spaces in which bodies are viewed after death; considers the political nature of memorialising activities, and the therapeutic value of visiting places of death, for example after suicide. The chapters provide rich and current data from a large number of recent UK-based and international projects that examine various forms of death, dying and bereavement, providing insight into the different ways in which dying and bereaved people interact with the environment around them, and 'the matter' of death

Here is an excellent new book packed with state-of-the-art information on thanatology. It presents valuable insights on the history, current issues, and future directions for the modern death movement. This comprehensive volume is unique in that it offers multiple perspectives on the issues and problems facing the thanatology movement in the United States from well-known experts in a variety of fields, including nursing, psychology, death education, medicine, ethics, and suicide prevention. By crossing disciplinary boundaries, these authoritative contributors are able to critically examine the entire thanatological community and provide glimpses of an agenda for the 1990s. The Thanatology Community and the Needs of the Movement provides valuable insights on important issues in the field such as: ethical concerns in thanatology setting standards for the field of thanatology advocacy and empowerment for the dying, the bereaved, and their caregivers effective approaches to death education for professionals and for the public sector suicide prevention Individual chapters address such pertinent topics as educational needs in thanatology, the undervaluation of caregiving, policy legislation for issues facing the terminally ill or bereaved, and the care of children facing death. This groundbreaking book gives death educators, academic nurses, clergy, divinity school faculty, and academic and clinical psychologists the keys to advancing scholarship and practice in the field of thanatology. Its interdisciplinary focus facilitates better cooperation between academics and practitioners to ultimately enhance all services for the dying and bereaved.

This book consists of full texts of papers presented at the National Conference on Risk Factors for Youth Suicide held in Bethesda, MD in May 1986. These papers were critiqued by a review panel and opened for discussion and comment by those attending the conference. A major job for the Secretary's task force on youth suicide was to assess and consolidate current information. The work group generated a comprehensive list of potential risk factors, grouped them into specific risk factor domains, and identified experts in each area to review the scientific literature and write summary papers. In their papers, the commissioned authors were asked to catalogue analyze and synthesize the literature on factors linked to youth suicide.

Sleepless Souls is a social and cultural history of suicide in early modern England. Self-murder was regarded as a heinous crime in Tudor and Stuart England, and was subject to savage punishments. Those who committed suicide had their property forfeited to the crown, and their bodies were denied Christian burial and desecrated. In Georgian England suicide was in practice de-criminalized, tolerated and even sentimentalized. Michael MacDonald and Terence R. Murphy, using a wide variety of contemporary sources, especially local records, trace the causes of this dramatic change in attitude. They analyse suicide within its contemporary context, relating shifts in opinion and practice to the complex framework of life in early modern England. Political events, religious changes, philosophical fashions, conflicts between centre and localities, and differing class interests all played their part. The authors' focus on the trauma of death by suicide uncovers the forces that were reshaping the mental outlook of different English classes and social groups. Their detailed and scholarly exploration of the `crime' of self-murder thus provides a history of social and cultural change in English society over three centuries.

Death in war matters. It matters to the individual, threatened with their own death, or the death of loved ones. It matters to groups and communities who have to find ways to manage death, to support the bereaved and to dispose of bodies amidst the confusion of conflict. It matters to the state, which has to find ways of coping with mass death that convey a sense of gratitude and respect for the sacrifice of both the victims of war, and those that mourn in their wake. This social and cultural history of Britain in the Second World War places death at the heart of our understanding of the British experience of conflict. Drawing on a range of material, Dying for the nation demonstrates just how much death matters in wartime and examines the experience, management and memory of death. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in the social and cultural history of Britain in the Second World War. -- .

First published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book on end of life examines how to include people with intellectual and developmental disability in the inevitability of dying and death. Comprising 17 chapters, it addresses challenging and under-researched topics including suicide, do-not-resuscitate, advance care planning, death doulas and accessible funerals. Topics reflect everyday community, palliative care, hospice and disability services. The book proposes that the rights of people with disabilities should be supported up to and after their death. Going beyond problem identification, the chapters offer positive, evidence-supported responses that translate research to practice, together with practice examples and resources grounded in lived experience. The book is applicable to readers from the disability field, and mainstream health professionals who assist people with disability in emergency care, palliative care or end-of-life planning

In early modern Europe, the circulation of visual and verbal transmissions of sati, or Hindu widowburning, not only informed responses to the ritualized violence of Hindu culture, but also intersected in fascinating ways with specifically European forms of ritualized violence and European constructions of gender ideology. European accounts of women being burned in India uncannily commented on the burnings of women as witches and criminal wives in Europe. When Europeans narrated their accounts of sati, perhaps the most striking illustration of Hindu patriarchal violence, they did not specifically connect the act of widowburning to a corresponding European signifier: the gruesome ceremonial burnings of women as witches. In examining early modern representations of sati, the book focuses specifically on those strategies that enabled European travelers to protect their own identity as uniquely civilized amidst spectacular displays of "Eastern barbarity."

This richly illustrated book provides a glimpse into the belief system and the material wealth of the social elite in pre-Imperial China through a close analysis of tomb contents and excavated bamboo texts. The point of departure is the textual and material evidence found in one tomb of an elite man buried in 316 BCE near a once wealthy middle Yangzi River valley metropolis. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of cosmological symbolism and the nature of the spirit world. The author shows how illness and death were perceived as steps in a spiritual journey from one realm into another. Transmitted textual records are compared with excavated texts. The layout and contents of this multi-chambered tomb are analyzed as are the contents of two texts, a record of divination and sacrifices performed during the last three years of the occupant's life and a tomb inventory record of mortuary gifts. The texts are fully translated and annotated in the appendices. A first-time close-up view of a set of local beliefs which not only reflect the larger ancient Chinese religious system but also underlay the rich intellectual and artistic life of pre-Imperial China. With first full translations of texts previously unknown to all except a small handful of sinologists.

Once regarded as taboo, it is now claimed that we are a death-obsessed society. The face of death in the 21st century, brought about by cultural and demographic change and advances in medical technology, presents health and social care practitioners with new challenges and dilemmas. By focusing on predominant patterns of dying; global images of death; shifting boundaries between the public and the private; and cultural pluralism, the author looks at the way death is handled in contemporary society and the sensitive ethical and practical dilemmas facing nurses, social workers, doctors and chaplains. This book brings together perspectives from social science, health-care and pastoral theology to assist the reader in understanding and negotiating this 'new death'. End-of-life care and old age, changing funeral and burial practices, new stigmas such as drug-related bereavements, are highlighted, and theories of dying and bereavement re-examined in their context. The concluding chapters incorporate recent case studies into an exploration of the meanings and shape of holistic and integrated care. Students interested in death studies from a sociological and cultural viewpoint as well as health and social care practitioners, will benefit from its critical appraisal and application of the established knowledge base to contemporary practices and ethical debates.

This book explores how social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp 'accidentally' enable and nurture the creation of digital afterlives, and, importantly, the effect this digital inheritance has on the bereaved. Debra J. Bassett offers a holistic exploration of this phenomenon and presents qualitative data from three groups of participants: service providers, digital creators, and digital inheritors. For the bereaved, loss of data, lack of control, or digital obsolescence can lead to a second loss, and this book introduces the theory of 'the fear of second loss'. Bassett argues that digital afterlives challenge and disrupt existing grief theories, suggesting how these theories might be expanded to accommodate digital inheritance. This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to sociologists, cyber psychologists, philosophers, death scholars, and grief counsellors. But Bassett's book can also be seen as a canary in the coal mine for the 'intentional' Digital Afterlife Industry (DAI) and their race to monetise the dead. This book provides an understanding of the profound effects uncontrollable timed posthumous messages and the creation of thanabots could have on the bereaved, and Bassett's conception of a Digital Do Not Reanimate (DDNR) order and a voluntary code of conduct could provide a useful addition to the DAI. Even in the digital societies of the West, we are far from immortal, but perhaps the question we really need to ask is: who wants to live forever?

Winner of a Gold Nautilus Award "We can do extraordinary things when we lead with love," Barbara Becker reminds us in her debut memoir Heartwood. When her earliest childhood friend is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Becker sets off on a quest to immerse herself in what it means to be mortal. Can we live our lives more fully knowing some day we will die? With a keen eye towards that which makes life worth living, Barbara Becker--a perpetual seeker, a mom, and an interfaith leader--recounts stories where life and death intersect in unexpected ways. She volunteers on a hospice floor, becomes an eager student of the many ways people find meaning at the end of life, and accompanies her parents in their final days. Becker inspires readers to live with the end in mind and proves that turning toward loss rather than away from it is the only true way to live life to its fullest. Just as with the heartwood of a tree--the central core that is no longer alive yet supports the newer growth rings--the dead become an enduring source of strength to the living. With life-affirming prose, Becker helps us see that that grief is not a problem to be solved, but rather a sacred invitation--an opportunity to let go into something even greater...a love that will inform all the days of our lives.

As a practising mortician, Caitlin Doughty has long been fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies. In From Here to Eternity she sets out in search of cultures unburdened by such fears. With curiosity and morbid humour, Doughty introduces us to inspiring death-care innovators, participates in powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in the West and explores new spaces for mourning - including a futuristic glowing-Buddha columbarium in Japan, a candlelit Mexican cemetery, and America's only open-air pyre. In doing so she expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with 'dignity' and reveals unexpected possibilities for our own death rituals.

THE REVISED ANNOTATION for 978-1-934297-10-0 and for 978-1-934297-11-7Death And Anti-Death, Volume 8: Fifty Years After Albert Camus (1913-1960) is edited by Charles Tandy, Ph.D.: ISBN 978-1-934297-10-0 is the Hardback edition and ISBN 978-1-934297-11-7 is the Paperback edition. Volume 8, as indicated by the anthology's subtitle, is in honor of Albert Camus (1913-1960). The chapters do not necessarily mention him (but some chapters do). The chapters (by professional philosophers and other professional scholars) are directed to issues related to death, life extension, and anti-death, broadly construed. Most of the contributions consist of scholarship unique to this volume. As was the case with all previous volumes in the Death And Anti-Death Series By Ria University Press, the anthology includes an Index as well as an Abstracts section that serves as an extended table of contents. (Volume 8 also includes a BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS section.) Volume 8 includes chapters by some of the world 's leading living thinkers and doers, including: ------Gregory M. Fahy (Founder of biological vitrification research for large-scale organ banking) ------J. R. Lucas (Inventor of a version of the G delian Argument that minds are not mere machines) ------John Searle (Inventor of the Chinese Room Argument against Strong Artificial Intelligence). There are 18 chapters, as follows: ------CHAPTER ONE Homer, Heroes And Humanity: Vico 's New Science On Death And Mortality (by Giorgio Baruchello) pages 33-52; ------CHAPTER TWO Cryonics: A Scientific Challenge To Death (by Benjamin P. Best) pages 53-78; ------CHAPTER THREE Primary Institutions (by Thomas O. Buford) pages 79-90; ------CHAPTER FOUR Physical And Biological Aspects Of Renal Vitrification (by Gregory M. Fahy et al.) pages 91-120; ------CHAPTER FIVE Latest Advances In Antiaging Medicine (by Terry Grossman) pages 121-146; ------CHAPTER SIX The Will To Believe (by William James) pages 147-170; ------CHAPTER SEVEN Politics, Death, And Camus 's Late Anarchic Style (by John Randolph LeBlanc) pages 171-198; ------CHAPTER EIGHT Can One Be Harmed Posthumously? (by Jack Lee) pages 199-210; ------CHAPTER NINE The G delian Argument: Turn Over The Page (by J. R. Lucas) pages 211-224; ------CHAPTER TEN The Function Of Assisted Suicide In The System Of Human Rights (by Ludwig A. Minelli) pages 225-234; ------CHAPTER ELEVEN Death, Resurrection, And Immortality: Some Mathematical Preliminaries (by R. Michael Perry) pages 235-292; ------CHAPTER TWELVE The Chinese Room Argument (by John Searle) pages 293-302; ------CHAPTER THIRTEEN What 's Best For Us (by Asher Seidel) pages 303-332; ------CHAPTER FOURTEEN Camus, Plague Literature, And The Apocalyptic Tradition (by David Simpson) pages 333-362; ------CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Absurd Walls Of Albert Camus (by Charles Taliaferro) pages 363-378; ------CHAPTER SIXTEEN Camusian Thoughts About The Ultimate Question Of Life (by Charles Tandy) pages 379-401; ------CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The UP-TO Project: How To Achieve World Peace, Freedom, And Prosperity (by Charles Tandy) pages 401-418); ------CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Life And Death, And The Identity Problem (by James Yount) pages 419-448. ------The INDEX begins on page 449.

In Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe, Aleksandra Koutny-Jones explores the emergence of a remarkable cultural preoccupation with death in Poland-Lithuania (1569-1795). Examining why such interests resonated so strongly in the Baroque art of this Commonwealth, she argues that the printing revolution, the impact of the Counter-Reformation, and multiple afflictions suffered by Poland-Lithuania all contributed to a deep cultural concern with mortality. Introducing readers to a range of art, architecture and material culture, this study considers various visual evocations of death including 'Dance of Death' imagery, funerary decorations, coffin portraiture, tomb chapels and religious landscapes. These, Koutny-Jones argues, engaged with wider European cultures of contemplation and commemoration, while also being critically adapted to the specific context of Poland-Lithuania.

Many people still believe in life after death, but modern institutions operate as though this were the only world - eternity is now eclipsed from view in society and even in the church. This book carefully observes the eclipse - what caused it, how full is it, what are its consequences, will it last? How significant is recent interest in near-death experiences and reincarnation?

In this book, Sarah Tarlow provides an innovative archaeology of bereavement, mortality and memory in the early modern and modern period. She draws on literary and historical sources as well as on material evidence to examine the evolution of attitudes towards death and commemoration over four centuries.

The book argues that changes in commemorative practices over time relate to a changing relationship between the living and the dead and are inextricably linked to the conceptions of identity and personal relationships which characterize later Western history. The author's approach is different from most previous work in this area not only because of its focus on material culture but also because of its incorporation of experiential and emotional factors into discussions of human relations and understandings in the past.

As well as introducing readers to the study of death and rememberance in the past, this book contributes to wider archaeological debates about the interpretation of meaning and the place of emotion and experience in archaeological study. It will be of interest to all scholars and students interested in critical and theoretically informed approaches to the study of people in the past.

Marilyn Johnson was enthralled by the remarkable lives that were marching out of this world--so she sought out the best obits in the English language and the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. She surveyed the darkest corners of Internet chat rooms, and made a pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all. Now she leads us on a compelling journey into the cult and culture behind the obituary page and the unusual lives we don't quite appreciate until they're gone.

This book addresses the dying process and the nature of death itself with the intention that it might help us to accept and embrace both these things as a part of life. Intended to provide a shift in perception, this book aims to alleviate some of the fear, resistance and denial surrounding death. Much has been written about death by spiritual teachers, psychologists, philosophers and palliative specialists, but this book is an entry into the conversation from a viewpoint that is not medical, religious, nor postulating any form of belief system. It is partly a survey of our attitude and resistance to dying and death, and partly an examination of the options available that could serve as a non-denominational enquiry into this unavoidable eventuality. The principle belief is that the tools required for this shift in perception are to be found within us - we already possess what we need that would allow us to drop the heavy weight of fear and anxiety. This book will help the reader to find these tools, guiding the reader towards their own, most direct route, and focuses on the validity of individual experience.

A Kyrgyz cemetery seen from a distance is astonishing. The ornate domes and minarets, tightly clustered behind stone walls, seem at odds with this desolate mountain region. Islam, the prominent religion in the region since the twelfth century, discourages tombstones or decorative markers. However, elaborate Kyrgyz tombs combine earlier nomadic customs with Muslim architectural forms. After the territory was formally incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1876, enamel portraits for the deceased were attached to the Muslim monuments. Yet everything within the walls is overgrown with weeds, for it is not Kyrgyz tradition for the living to frequent the graves of the dead. Architecturally unique, Kyrgyzstan's dramatically sited cemeteries reveal the complex nature of the Kyrgyz people's religious and cultural identities. Often said to have left behind few permanent monuments or books, the Kyrgyz people in fact left behind a magnificent legacy when they buried their dead. Traveling in Kyrgyzstan, photographer Margaret Morton became captivated by the otherworldly grandeur of these cemeteries. Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan collects the photographs she made on several visits to the area and is an important contribution to the architectural and cultural record of this region. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haaOw6cx1yk