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Socialising (with) the Dead

Module description

Do you want to be buried, burned, or embalmed? Or perhaps you’d rather be dismembered, or devoured, or dissected into specimen jars? Whether you have a preference or not, someone will do something with your corpse.

The ways in which humans deal with their dead not only reflect social and cultural preferences, but index wider constructs of ‘death’ as a social state of being – regardless of whether or not the deceased are imagined to transition into a type of post-mortem existence or otherworldly realm. Mortuary practices and their associated activities not only re-socialize the body, but can variously trigger, extend or transform the sociality of the dead within the lives of the living. Juxtaposing selected examples of mortuary practice from ancient southwest Asian cultures (including those refracted in the Bible) and the contemporary world, we will explore how and why humans socialize (with) the dead, and ask what our own cultural and personal preferences about corpse management might reveal about us.

This module will employ a range of approaches drawn particularly from anthropology, archaeology, material-culture studies, and the study of ritual and religion. Although it might be of particular interest to students of religion, theology, sociology, or ancient history, previous work in these areas is not required.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module has three aims: (1) to enable you to better understand death as a culturally-inflected social process, rather than only a physiological event; (2) to enable you to better understand the intersection of materiality and sociality in constructs of the body, personhood and identity; (3) to enable you to employ interdisciplinary approaches in analysing ancient and contemporary cultural preferences.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate critical understanding of the diverse approaches taken in the broad field of death studies
• 2. Demonstrate reflective and critical skills in the analysis of a selected mortuary site, event, or associated practice

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Demonstrate awareness of the intersection of materiality and sociality in selected cultural constructs and practices
• 4. Demonstrate awareness of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding ancient and/or contemporary cultural preferences

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Offer critical reflection on academic literature and/or material data in an oral presentation
• 6. Analyse and/or discuss challenging topics with cultural sensitivity and emotional care
• 7. Plan, structure, and produce to deadline a piece of critical and reflective written work

Syllabus plan

While the content may vary from year to year, this module will usually include:

• Dynamics of death
• Refashioning the dead and making new bodies
• Disarticulating skeletons and re-organising bones
• Dismembering and defleshing
• Preservation and transformation
• Agency and ashes
• Troublesome corpses

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 50%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of referral will be capped at 50%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Jenny Hockey, Carol Komaromy and Kate Woodthorpe (eds.), The Matter of Death: Space, Place and Materiality (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
• Glennys Howarth, Death and Dying: A Sociological Introduction (Cambridge: Polity, 2007)
• Nicola Laneri (ed.), Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 2007)
• Colin Renfrew, Michael J. Boyd, Iain Morley (eds.), Death, Rituals, Social Order and the Archaeology of Immortality in the Ancient World (Cambridge: CUP, 2016)
• John Robb and Oliver J. T. Harris, The Body in History: Europe from the Palaeolithic to the Future (Cambridge: CUP, 2013)
• Antonius C. G. M. Robben (ed.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Death (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2018)
• Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stultz (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial (Oxford: OUP, 2013)
• Aubrey Thamann and Kalliopi M. Christodoulaki (eds.), Beyond the Veil: Reflexive Studies on Death and Dying (New York: Berghahn, 2021)
• Tony Walters, Death in the Modern World (London: Sage, 2020)
• Howard Williams and Lorna-Jane Richardson (eds.), Death in the Contemporary World: Perspectives from Public Archaeology 8.2 (2018), Special Issue 3

Key words search

Death, Body, Ritual, Culture