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NEW LIFE IN THE MODERN CULTURAL HISTORY OF DEATH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2018

HANNAH MALONE Open the ORCID record for HANNAH MALONE [Opens in a new window]
HANNAH MALONE*
Affiliation:
Freie Universität Berlin
*
Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Koserstr. 20, 14195 Berlin, Germany[email protected]
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Abstract

This essay presents a critical overview of recent literature in English on the modern cultural history of death. In order to locate new developments, it charts the evolution of the field from the 1970s until today and distinguishes between French and Anglophone strands in the historiography. A selection of studies published between 2005 and 2015 exemplifies a revival in recent scholarship that hangs on four main innovations: the abandonment of grand narratives of modernization and secularization; an interdisciplinary integration of political, cultural, and intellectual history; greater attention to the individual; and the expansion of the field beyond Europe and North America. Thus, today, the history of death is both local and global, public and private, personal and universal.

Type
Historiographical Reviews
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 833 - 852
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Andrew Arsan and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on this essay.

References

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35 Ibid., p. 143.

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37 Ibid., p. 577, and personal communication with Carl Watkins on 18 Jan. 2017.

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58 Ibid., pp. 264–73.

59 Ibid., pp. 268–9.

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76 Ibid., p. 4; Laqueur, The work of the dead, p. 561.

77 Brown, The reaper's garden, p. 10.

78 Ibid.

79 Black, Death in Berlin, p. 1.

80 Ibid., p. 177.

81 Ibid., p. 7.

82 Ibid., p. 87.

83 Ibid., p. 40.

84 Ibid., p. 62.

85 Ibid., p. 79.

86 Ibid., p. 126.

87 Ibid., p. 104.

88 Ibid., p. 151.

89 Ibid., p. 153.

90 Ibid., p. 189.

91 Ibid., p. 106.