We’ve all seen her. Hunched over the grave of an important poet. Standing meekly atop deceased philosophers, businessmen, and writers […]
Burying the Dead, and Then Digging Them Up
About a week after my partner Clayton was murdered in 2015, I went back to his gravesite with one of […]
Fresh to Death: African Americans and RIP T-Shirts
My 28-year-old nephew, Willie Lee “Chill” Oglesby, Jr., was murdered on November 8, 2017. One of the first things that […]
News from the Dead
On December 14, 1650, 22-year old Anne Greene was led up the gallows in Oxford. She had been charged with […]
The Deathbed and the Sound of Rebirth
What is the soundscape of the deathbed? Most often, for Chinese Buddhists, it has involved the sound of human voices […]
“Heroic Effort Beyond the Call of Duty”: Death Care Workers and the 1947 Texas City Disaster
On April 16, 2020, the New York Times published an op-ed about the challenges facing overwhelmed funeral directors around the […]
Death, Distance, and the Digital World
My neighbor died as I was finishing this essay. We were two weeks into the stay-at-home order during the COVID-19 […]
Plastered Skulls: What can a 10,000 year old tradition teach us about coping with death?
Teaching about Death and Burial “Design your own burial” is an activity on my course syllabus. No matter how many […]
Straightened Up and Dying Right? Queering Puritan Deathbeds
When I was ten, I was present at a close family friend’s deathbed, an experience that sparked my lifelong curiosity […]
A Different Kind of Expert
In the spring of 1813, Abigail Adams wrote to her friend Julia Rush inquiring after the death of Julia’s husband […]
