When the global death toll of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic surpassed one million in late September, the United States and […]
Alone, Together: Memory and Death in a Pandemic
“You’re lucky, then, that your mom died before all this began,” my friend said. “At least you got to be […]
Bodies in the Way: Delhi’s Dead and the Pressures of Space
In 1930, Delhi’s residents were sorely in need of a new hospital. The city’s population had ballooned by more than […]
Dead Babies in Boxes: Dealing with the Consequences of Interrupted Reproduction
One morning in June 2019, two city workers in Lyon, France, pulled a plastic bag out of the river that […]
Hygeia: Women in the Cemetery Landscape
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 […]
