This book responds to a growing interest in death, dying and the dead within and beyond the field of death studies. The collection defines an understanding of ‘difficult death’ and examines the differences between death, dying and the dead, as well as exploring the ethical challenges of researching death in mediated form. The collection is attendant to the ways in which difficult deaths are imbricated in power structures both before and after they become mediatised in culture. As such, the work navigates the many political and social complexities and inequalities ­– what might be deemed the difficulties – of death, dying and the dead. The book seeks to expand understandings of the difficulty of death in media and culture through a wide range of chapters from different contexts focused on literature, film, television, and in online environments, as well as several chapters examining news reportage of difficult deaths. 

Following the Formula in Beowulf, OErvar-Odds saga, and Tolkien proposes that Beowulf was composed according to a formula. Michael Fox imagines the process that generated the poem and provides a model for reading it, extending this model to investigate formula in a half-line, a fitt, a digression, and a story-pattern or folktale, including the Old-Norse Icelandic OErvar-Odds saga. Fox also explores how J. R. R. Tolkien used the same formula to write Sellic Spell and The Hobbit. This investigation uncovers relationships between oral and literate composition, between mechanistic composition and author, and between listening and reading audiences, arguing for a contemporary relevance for Beowulf in thinking about the creative process.

Gender, Supernatural Beings, and the Liminality of Death: Monstrous Males/Fatal Females examines representations of the supernatural dead to demonstrate shifts in the manifestation of gender. Including readings of East Asian detectives/cyborgs, Iranian vampires, and African zombies, among others, This collection offers a multi-faceted look at myth, legend, and popular culture representations of the gendered supernatural from a broad range of international contexts. The contributors show that, as creatures pass through the liminal space of death, their new supernatural forms challenge cultural conceptions of gender, masculinity, and femininity.

Gender, Supernatural Beings, and the Liminality of Death: Monstrous Males/Fatal Females examines representations of the supernatural dead to demonstrate shifts in the manifestation of gender. Including readings of East Asian detectives/cyborgs, Iranian vampires, and African zombies, among others, This collection offers a multi-faceted look at myth, legend, and popular culture representations of the gendered supernatural from a broad range of international contexts. The contributors show that, as creatures pass through the liminal space of death, their new supernatural forms challenge cultural conceptions of gender, masculinity, and femininity.

Following the Formula in Beowulf, OErvar-Odds saga, and Tolkien proposes that Beowulf was composed according to a formula. Michael Fox imagines the process that generated the poem and provides a model for reading it, extending this model to investigate formula in a half-line, a fitt, a digression, and a story-pattern or folktale, including the Old-Norse Icelandic OErvar-Odds saga. Fox also explores how J. R. R. Tolkien used the same formula to write Sellic Spell and The Hobbit. This investigation uncovers relationships between oral and literate composition, between mechanistic composition and author, and between listening and reading audiences, arguing for a contemporary relevance for Beowulf in thinking about the creative process.

Over the past few years, something remarkable has occurred in Latin America. For the first time since the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in the 1980s, people within the region have turned toward radical left governments - specifically in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Why has this profound shift taken place and how does this new, so-called Twenty-First-Century Socialism actually manifest itself? What are we to make of the often fraught relationship between the social movements and governments in these countries and do, in fact, the latter even qualify as 'socialist' in reality? These are the bold and critical questions that Latin America's Turbulent Transitions explores. The authors provocatively argue that although US hegemony in the region is on the wane, the traditional socialist project is also declining and something new is emerging. Going beyond simple conceptions of 'the left', the book reveals the true underpinnings of this powerful, transformative, and yet also complicated and contradictory process.

The Divine Narrative is the story of scripture. It's the story of God's relentless pursuit to reconcile everything-by the cross-in earth and in heaven. The biblical story naturally unfolds within the framework of a five-act stage play, inviting followers of Jesus of every generation to participate in the final act. Discover God's story as never before, Learn how to map your own life's narrative, and how to join your story to HiStory This little volume invites you to more fully know your God and yourself and to walk with him in a fresh and meaningful way!

Do you ache for the consolations of home? Do you feel, at times, a sense of desolation as if you are lost in a wilderness, without a sense of direction or connection? Perhaps you've reached a season where parents and siblings and even the home place are but a fading memory. Perhaps your longing is for a home you never had. Perhaps home for you is an elusive sense of identity, safety, warmth and assurance. This unique little volume might just be your third base coach waving you home. Safe at Home explores origins through the beauty of baseball as metaphor. The author, Michael Fox, is an executive coach, a trainer, a spiritual director, a writer, a reader, a baseball historian, and a graphic designer living in Northeast Louisiana.

It may not be what you think it is. Unless you think it might be an imagined series of brief conversations between Jesus and the Apostle Paul-historical fiction; that takes place on Mount Sinai and within Ancient Israel`s tabernacle; conversations that ultimately answer where-or better, who-are the thin places where heaven and earth intersect. On the other hand, if that's what you thought it might be, it's exactly what you think it is. Michael Fox is an executive coach, a trainer, a spiritual director, a writer, a reader, a baseball historian, and a graphic designer living in Northeast Louisiana.