History of Death in Culture (2024)

Davies, Douglas, ed. A Cultural History of Death. 6 vols. Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.

“How has our understanding of death evolved over the course of 2,500 years? What can recorded history tell us about how different cultures and societies have felt about, experienced, responded to and marked the occasion of death across different periods and lands?

These are the questions pursued by 54 experts in this landmark work that explores the way past societies thought, behaved and developed as they wrestled with enormity of their own mortality. The volumes draw on history, anthropology and cultural studies to carve a complete picture of death, its symbols and interpretations from Antiquity to the present day.

Individual editors ensure volumes are cohesive and chapter titles are also identical across the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or tracing a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six.

The six volumes cover: 1. – Antiquity (500 BCE - 800 CE); 2. – Middle Ages (800 - 1450); 3. –Renaissance (1450 - 1650) ; 4. – Age of Enlightenment (1650 - 1789); 5. – Age of Empire (1800 - 1920); 6. – Modern Age (1920 – 2000+).

Themes (and chapter titles) are: Dead and Dying Bodies; The Sensory Aesthetics of Death; Emotions, Mortality and Vitality; Death's Ritual-Symbolic Performance; Sites, Power and Politics of Death; Gender, Age and Identity; Explaining Death; and The Undead and Eternal.

The page extent is approximately 1,728 pp with c. 300 illustrations. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors, a series preface and an introduction, and concludes with Notes, Bibliography and an Index.

The Cultural Histories Series
A Cultural History of Death is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).

Table of Contents

Volume 1: A Cultural History of Death in Antiquity
Edited by Mario Erasmo, University of Georgia, USA

Dead and Dying Bodies, Valerie M. Hope (Open University) The Sensory Aesthetics of Death, Robert Garland (Colgate University, USA) Emotions, Mortality and Vitality, Evy Johanne Håland (Norwegian Ministry of Culture, Norway) Death's Ritual-Symbolic Performance, Emma-Jayne Graham (Open University) Sites, Power and Politics of Death, Penelope J. E. Davies (University of Texas at Austin, USA) Gender, Age and Identity, Maureen Carroll (University of York, UK) Explaining Death: Belief, Law and Ethics, Anton J. L. van Hooff (the Netherlands) The Undead and Eternal, Debbie Felton (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)
1.
Volume 2: A Cultural History of Death in the Middle Ages
Edited by Ashby Kinch, University of Montana, USA

Volume 3: A Cultural History of Death in the Renaissance
Edited by Gordon D. Raeburn, University of Melbourne, Australia and Nathaniel A. Warne, Independent Scholar, UK

Volume 4: A Cultural History of Death in the Age of Enlightenment
Edited by Jeffrey Freedman, Yeshiva University, USA

Volume 5: A Cultural History of Death in the Age of Empire
Edited by Helen MacDonald, University of Melbourne, Australia

Volume 6: A Cultural History of Death in the Modern Age
Edited by Douglas J. Davies, Durham University, UK”

Description from the publisher’s website.