"The most typical Zapotec objects are the funerary urns of pottery which were buried in or around tombs in Oaxaca, Mexico. The funerary urns found with these tombs were never placed in the chamber itself, but generally above the lintel of the door, on the roof, on the floor in front of the door, fastened in the façade, placed in niches over the door, or in other similar places. they are always found empty and no clue as to their use is known. It is possible that they contained water for the dead; on the other hand, religious conservatism might have caused the continuation of their form long after their utilitarian employment had been discontinued and their purpose forgotten."
Btw I went searching for your post about PhD research and grief after someone posted it on Instagram on some random crappy spam account. Id be super interested in reading your work but im sure its tied to your real name. Any recommendations for other related works?
Finally getting round to actually answering asks XD
This is the link to my thesis etheses.whiterose.ac.uk:37578
I can definitely suggest some other reading on the topic. I suppose it depends on exactly what you're interested in.
In terms of intro to Victorian Funerals:
Curl is a good starter, though not my favourite
Curl, J. S. (2000). The Victorian Celebration of Death. Stroud: Sutton
Litten is a better book, imo, but might be harder to get hold of
Litten, J. (1991). The English Way of Death: The common funeral since 1450. London: Robert Hale
Taylor is the most comprehensive author on mourning dress
Taylor, L. (2009) Mourning Dress (Routledge Revivals): A Costume and Social History. London: Routledge.
Harold Mytum (who is just the best guy) does a lot on burial and memorialisation. One of his latest books of edited essays is
Mytum, H., and Burgess, L. (2018). Death Across Oceans: Archaeology of Coffins and Vaults in Britain, America, and Australia. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Sarah Tarlow is also a big name in post-medieval death studies
Tarlow, S. (1999). Bereavement and commemoration: An archaeology of mortality. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Tarlow, S. (2011). Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In terms of historical grief:
Julie-Marie Strange is an amazing researcher. She's done a lot of work on 19th-20th century grief amongst the working class
Strange, J.-M. (2002). ‘‘She cried a very little’: Death, grief and mourning in working-class culture, c. 1880-1914’, Social History, 27 (2), 143–161. Available at: doi:10.1080/03071020210128373
Strange, J.-M. (2003). Only a Pauper Whom Nobody Owns: Reassessing the Pauper Grave c. 1880-1914. Past & Present, 178, 148–175. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3600760
Pat Jalland is also a major figure in Victorian grief studies.
Jalland, P. (1996). Death in the Victorian Family. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Helen Frisby does folklore and death and grief
Frisby, H. (2015). ‘Drawing the pillow, laying out and port wine: the moral economy of death, dying and bereavement in England, c.1840–1930’, Mortality, 20 (2), 103–127. Available at: doi:10.1080/13576275.2014.954240
If you're more interested in psychologies of grief
Stroebe and Schut, and Klass et al. are really foundational theories of modern grief psychology.
Stroebe, M. and Schut, H. (1999). ‘The dual process model of coping with bereavement: rationale and description’, Death Studies, 23 (3), 197–224. Available at: doi:10.1080/074811899201046
Klass, D., Silverman, P. R. and Nickman, S. L. (1996) Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. London: Routledge
Robert Neimeyer is my favourite grief psychologist. He's written hundreds of articles.
Neimeyer, R.A., Klass, D. and Dennis, M.R. (2014) ‘A social constructionist account of grief: loss and the narration of meaning’, Death studies, 38(6–10), pp. 485–498.
Neimeyer, R.A. (2014) ‘The narrative arc of tragic loss: Grief and the reconstruction of meaning’, International Journal of Existential Psychology
If you're interested in works about grief and material culture/objects
Gibson has done a lot of theory
Gibson, M. (2004). ‘Melancholy objects’, Mortality, 9 (4), 285–299. Available at: doi:10.1080/13576270412331329812
Gibson, M. (2008). Objects Of The Dead: Mourning And Memory In Everyday Life. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
Gibson, M. (2010). Death and the Transformation of Objects and Their Value. Thesis Eleven, 103 (1), 54–64. Available at: doi:10.1177/0725513610388988
Stallybrass, Parrott and Barney and Yoshimura have some great case studies
Stallybrass, P. (1993). ‘Worn worlds: clothes, mourning, and the life of things’, The Yale Review, 81 (2), 35–50.
Parrott, F. (2011) ‘Death, Memory and Collecting: Creating the Conditions for Ancestralisation in South London Households’, in S. Byrne et al. (eds) Unpacking the Collection: Networks of Material and Social Agency in the Museum. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 289–305.
Parrott, F.R. (2010) ‘Bringing Home the Dead: Photographs, Family Imaginaries and Moral Remains’, in M. Bille, F. Hastrup, and T.F. Soerensen (eds) An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of Transcendence and Loss. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 131–146.
Barney, K. A. and Yoshimura, C. G. (2021). ‘“Cleaning Out the Closet:” Communicated Narrative Sense-Making of Bereavement’, Journal of Family Communication, 21 (4), 255–271. Available at: doi:10.1080/15267431.2021.1943399
Feel free to ask for more specific recommendations! This was fun!
I think the spiciest thing I've found in my research on death is Arthur McGill contending that the ultimate divine authority of American Christians isn't God, but the power of death. We're so bound by our fear of our mortality that our lives are more shaped by avoiding and denying it than by the love God teaches and represents.
Anyway I’m teaching *~*Environmental Death Studies*~* next semester and I like to play music for my students at the start of class as they come in and settle into their desks, etc. Specific songs might be used as our Anticipatory Set for the day to spark some interest in the theme of the lecture.
Send me your Favorite Songs About Death! Bonus Points if they’re not in English (I like to mix languages, in case they’re trying to read emails to respond to something in that little gap time)
Here’s what is already on the playlist: The Parting Glass, Death of a Bachelor, Your Ex-Lover is Dead, Stairway to Heaven, American Pie, Non Je Ne Regrette Rien, Another One Bites the Dust, The Foggy Dew, Long Black Veil, Wake Me Up When September Ends, Two Coffins, The Hearse Song, Finnegan's Wake, Cemetery Gates
Obviously some of these songs as little heavy, so I’ll curate as needed. Finnegan’s Wake will probably be what we listen to on the first day when we talk about culture differences in death practices. Cemetery Gates will probably be used for the day we talk about cemeteries as nature preserves and green spaces, etc...
“Misery Chastain Cannot Be Dead: Annie Wilkes and Fan Rejection of Character Death”
Hey everyone! That essay I wrote in August for the 30th anniversary of Misery is up on Horror Homeroom! You can read it here!
In which I put Annie Wilkes’ response to the death of Misery Chastain into the context of fandom history, and invent a new concept, in Latin, because I couldn’t help myself. #ArsResurrectionem (Special thanks to my medievalist friend who responded without question when I was like ‘hey....what’s the gerund of ‘to resurrect?’ and helped me come up with a term that was a good mirror to ‘ars moriendi’.)
I’m doing a research project about different cultural beliefs about death and mortality, and I’m collecting data to learn more about current beliefs -- I’d be hugely grateful if you’d consider filling it out!
