A Cultural History of Death in the Modern Age

Douglas J. Davies

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350654549
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Death in today's world is sometimes centre stage and sometimes scarcely visible at all. The emotional mapping of dying, death, funerals, memory, and grief embraces much diversity as personal choice engages with patterns of tradition and increasing commercial options. Old people's homes offer respite while prompting anxiety over being forgotten while on the route to death, older old age is not always seen as a blessing.

Increasing academic and popular interest in mortality witnesses the rise of death studies, drawing from many academic disciplines, as reflected in this book's insightful work of anthropologists, sociologists, historians, theologians and literary scholars. These highlight the ritual and symbolism of funerals, memorials, sex, gender, and queer issues while also capturing key aspects of belief, law, and ethics. Literature, too, is not forgotten.

Traditional and woodland burials, cremation and its ashes, the freezing of the dead, and innovative forms of alkaline hydrolysis of bodies all play their part in contemporary wishes. But other pressured circumstances of migration, pandemics, war, terrorism, and most especially of global warming and climate change affect the energy, chemistry, and land used for the dead: death is now an ecological and environmental challenge. Yet, some long to live long while others seek death when assailed by serious illness, sometimes feeling betrayed by healthcare systems forbidding euthanasia. Many kinds of words against death accompany all these situations, not least as the quiet grief of families and friends touches our identity or even our destiny.

A Cultural History of Death is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available as hardcover sets for libraries preferring a tangible reference or as part of a fully-searchable digital library. The digital product is available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access via www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com. Individual volumes are available in print or digitally via www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• General Editor’s Preface Douglas J. Davies
• Introduction: Life-death, dividual personhood, trust, and cultural betrayal Douglas J. Davies
• 1 Dead and Dying Bodies Douglas J. Davies
• 2 The Sensory Aesthetics of Death: From Victorian Dream to the Digital Dead Jonathan Clinch
• 3 Emotions, Mortality, and Vitality: Female Empowerment in Twilight, The Hunger Games, and The Fault in Our Stars: Representations of Death in Contemporary Young Adult Literature Sibylle Erle
• 4 Death’s Ritual-Symbolic Performance Brenda Mathijssen and Claudia Venhorst
• 5 Sites, Power, and Politics of Death: Memorializing Mass Death since 1920 Adrian Gregory
• 6 Gender, Age, and Identity: Approaching Thanatology from a Queer Perspective Panagiotis Pentaris and Mattia Petricola
• 7 Explaining Death: Belief, Law, and Ethics Henry Novello
• 8 The Undead and Eternal Douglas J. Davies
• Notes
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index