Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mortality and its Timings
When is Death?
Editors: McCorristine, Shane (Ed.)
- Open Access
- Interrogates the philosophical question of what death means and when it occurs
- Explores such questions in chapters with a wide temporal and geographical span
- Argues for the value of an interdisciplinary approach when asking such questions
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- About this book
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This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
This volume provides a series of illuminating perspectives on the timings of death, through in-depth studies of Shakespearean tragedy, criminal execution, embalming practices, fears of premature burial, rumours of Adolf Hitler’s survival, and the legal concept of brain death. In doing so, it explores a number of questions, including: how do we know if someone is dead or not? What do people experience at the moment when they die? Is death simply a biological event that comes about in temporal stages of decomposition, or is it a social event defined through cultures, practices, and commemorations? In other words, when exactly is death? Taken together, these contributions explore how death emerges in a series of stages that are uncertain, paradoxical, and socially contested.
- About the authors
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Shane McCorristine is a cultural historian with interests in the themes of mortality and modernity. Between 2013 and 2015 he was a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow on the ‘Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse’ project at the University of Leicester, UK.
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Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
-
- Book Title
- Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mortality and its Timings
- Book Subtitle
- When is Death?
- Editors
-
- Shane McCorristine
- Series Title
- Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife
- Copyright
- 2017
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan UK
- Copyright Holder
- The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
- eBook ISBN
- 978-1-137-58328-4
- DOI
- 10.1057/978-1-137-58328-4
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-1-137-58327-7
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XV, 167
- Number of Illustrations and Tables
- 2 illustrations in colour
- Topics
