Overview
- 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
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife (PHSCCA)
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
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.
Reviews
“Being based in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies myself, I appreciate this volume as a valuable contribution to encouraging innovative and stimulating interdisciplinary collaboration in death studies.” (Solveiga Zibaite, Mortality, Vol. 24 (3), 2019)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editor
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.
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
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58328-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-58327-7Published: 05 October 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-84473-9Published: 13 November 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-58328-4Published: 19 September 2017
Series ISSN: 2947-6348
Series E-ISSN: 2947-6356
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 167
Number of Illustrations: 2 illustrations in colour
Topics: Cultural History, Social History, History of Science, Crime and Society, Philosophy of Science