About the Book
Death affects all aspects of life, it touches our emotions and influences our identity. Presenting a kaleidoscope of informative views of death, dying and human response, this book reveals how different disciplines contribute to understanding the theme of death. Drawing together new and established scholars, this is the first book among the studies of emotion that focuses on issues surrounding death, and the first among death studies which focuses on the issue of emotion. Themes explored include: themes of grief in the ties that bind the living and the dead, funerals, public memorials and the art of consolation, obituaries and issues of war and death-row, use of the internet in dying and grieving, what people do with cremated remains, new rituals of spiritual care in medical contexts, themes bounded and expressed through music, and more.
Table of Contents:
Introduction Emotion, Identity and Death, Douglas J. Davies, Chang-Won Park; Chapter 1 The Postmodern Obituary: Why Honesty Matters, Tim Bullamore; Chapter 2 Chronic Illness, Awareness of Death, and the Ambiguity of Peer Identification, Eva Jeppsson Grassman; Chapter 3 Nationalization and Mediatized Ritualization: The Broadcast Farewell of Fadime Sahindal, Eva Reimers; Chapter 4 Wiring Death: Dying, Grieving and Remembering on the Internet, Tim Hutchings; Chapter 5 Individuals and Relationships: On the Possibilities and Impossibilities of Presence, Arnar Árnason; Chapter 6 1I wish to express my thanks to my sister, Jessica Kohn McGuire, for initially inviting me to visit her client on Death Row and meet other colleagues involved in the California State Public Defender’s office. I also wish to thank colleagues at the University of Melbourne who helped me work through initial ideas (see note 4 below), to Sean Williams, Stuart Kirsch, Jens Zinn, Erin Fitz-Henry and to Douglas Davies and Chang-Won Park, the editors of this volume. Finally, I am forever grateful to Manny and Jay for teaching me so much., Tamara Kohn; Chapter 7 Sojourn, Transformative: Emotionand Identity in the Dying, Death, and Disposal of an Ex-Spouse, Jacque Lynn Foltyn; Chapter 8 Seeing Differently: Place, Art, and Consolation, Christina Marsden Gillis; Chapter 9 ‘Sacramentality’ and Identity Transformation: Deathbed Ritualsin Dutch Spiritual Care, Thomas Quartier; Chapter 10 Every Funeral Unique in (Y)our Way! Professionals Propagating Cremation Rituals, Meike Heessels; Chapter 11 Designing a Place for Goodbye: The Architecture of Crematoria in the Netherlands, MirjamKlaassens, PeterGroote; Chapter 12 New Identity of All Souls’ Day Celebrations in the Netherlands: Extra-Ecclesiastic Commemoration of the Dead, Art, and Religiosity, EricVenbrux; Chapter 13 A Dream of Immortality: Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), Hyun-AhKim; Chapter 14 De morte transire ad vitam? Emotion and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Requiem Compositions, WolfgangMarx; Chapter 15 War without Death: America’s Ingenious Plan to Defeat Enemies without Bloodshed, John Troyer;
About the Author :
Douglas Davies, Professor in the Study of Religion and Director of The Centre for Death and Life Studies, Durham University. Chang-Won Park, Honorary Research Associate, The Centre for Death and Life Studies, Durham University and Senior Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of Religion, Sogang University, South Korea.
Review :
'After reading this book, I felt full of ideas and possibilities. Presenting readers with a slice of mortality studies’ interdisciplinary range, this volume encourages the inventive pursuit of different [...] topics. Complex relationships between death, identity and emotion offer myriad applications. Quirky and complex, Emotion, identity & death will leave you thinking.' Mortality
