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A Cultural History of Death

26 January 2024
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A picture of the 'A Cultural History of Death' printed volumes

We are delighted to announce the publication of 'A Cultural History of Death' (Bloomsbury), a unique scholarly resource framing our mortality through eight themes and six eras edited by Professor Douglas Davies.

A Cultural History of Death

Published with Bloomsbury on 25th January 2024.

In this landmark work, the Director of our Centre for Death-Life Studies, Professor Douglas Davies FBA, alongside expert, era-specific, volume editors and their specially invited authors, has brought together key academic disciplines in a unique scholarly resource framing our mortality through eight themes and six eras.

Eight designated themes within each volume.

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: belief, law, and ethics. The undead and eternal.

Six eras traced across two millennia.  

Classical Antiquity. Middle Ages. Renaissance. Enlightenment. Age of Empire. Modern Age.

This scheme makes it possible to read themes as complements within one era or to trace one theme across 2,500 years, all with the help of some 54 scholars from a variety of countries.   

For more information, please visit https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/cultural-history-of-death-9781472536266/.