scholarly journals Afterword

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 176-185
Author(s):  
Annalisa Butticci ◽  
Amira Mittermaier
Keyword(s):  
Border Crossing ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Travel Accounts

We are all connected to multiple Elsewheres: the place(s) where we grew up, the place we would rather be, the places that haunt us, the places where the dead dwell, the sites of empire. Geographical Elsewheres can be a source of fear. In the wake of Europe’s so-called migrant crisis and border-crossing pandemic viruses, a moral and racist panic feeds off the supposed collapse of those ‘other places’ into ‘our society’. But other places can also be sites of fascination and longing. Think of the long history of travel accounts, or the long-standing desire to reach beyond the planetary horizon. The dream of a mission to Mars. Anything but the depressing here and now!

The History of the Judahite Bench Tomb

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Insight Into

The history of the Judahite bench tomb provides important insight into the meaning of mortuary practices, and by extension, death in the Hebrew Bible. The bench tomb appeared in Judah during Iron Age II. Although it included certain burial features that appear earlier in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, such as burial benches, and the use of caves for extramural burials, the Judahite bench tomb uniquely incorporated these features into a specific plan that emulated domestic structures and facilitated multigenerational burials. During the seventh century, and continuing into the sixth, the bench tombs become popular in Jerusalem. The history of this type of burial shows a gradual development of cultural practices that were meant to control death and contain the dead. It is possible to observe within these cultural practices the tomb as a means of constructing identity for both the dead and the living.

Love Letters to the Dead: Resurrecting an Epistolary Art

2009 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 313-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy A. Lander ◽  
John R. Graham-Pole
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
End Of Life Care ◽  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Life Care ◽  
University Teachers ◽  
Reflective Dialogue ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead

This article explores the art of letter-writing, specifically to our beloved dead, as a form of autoethnographic research, pedagogy, and care work. As university teachers and qualitative researchers in palliative and end-of-life care, we review the literature and history of epistolary communications with the deceased, as a prelude to writing our own letters. John writes to his long-dead mother and Dorothy to her recently deceased spouse Patrick, each letter followed by a reflective dialogue between us. Through this dialogue, we highlight the potential application of this art, or handcraft, to formal and informal palliative care, and the implications for practice, pedagogy, policy, and research. We propose that such direct, non-mediated, communications can offer a valuable form of healing for bereaved people. The therapeutic potential of letter writing and the abundance of literary and popular culture exemplars of responses from the dead are also largely unexplored in death education and research.

Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Berger
Keyword(s):  
Orthodox Jews ◽  
Core Beliefs ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Good Standing ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Jewish Resistance ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Second Coming

The focus of this book is the messianic trend in Lubavitch hasidism. It demonstrates how hasidim who affirm the dead Rebbe's messiahship have abandoned one of Judaism's core beliefs in favour of adherence to the doctrine of a second coming. At the same time, it decries the equanimity with which the standard-bearers of Orthodoxy have granted legitimacy to this development by continuing to recognize such believers as Orthodox Jews in good standing. This abandonment of the age-old Jewish resistance to a quintessentially Christian belief is a development of striking importance for the history of religions and an earthquake in the history of Judaism. The book chronicles the unfolding of this development. It argues that a large number, almost certainly a substantial majority, of Lubavitch hasidim believe in the Rebbe's messiahship; a significant segment, including educators in the central institutions of the movement, maintain a theology that goes beyond posthumous messianism to the affirmation that the Rebbe is pure divinity. While many Jews see Lubavitch as a marginal phenomenon, its influence is in fact growing at a remarkable rate. The book analyses the boundaries of Judaism's messianic faith and its conception of God. It assesses the threat posed by the messianists of Lubavitch and points to the consequences, ranging from undermining a fundamental argument against the Christian mission to calling into question the kosher status of many foods and ritual objects prepared under Lubavitch supervision. Finally, it proposes a strategy to protect authentic Judaism from this assault.

scholarly journals The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. By T. W. Laqueur

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-249
Author(s):  
Candi K. Cann
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead

The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains By T. W. Laqueur (2015) Princeton: Princeton University Press, 730pp.

scholarly journals Patterns of Memory in Askold Melnyczuk’s Novels as an Example of Ukrainian-American Émigré Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-137
Author(s):  
Marta Koval
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
European History ◽  
Family Stories ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Definition Of

Although Ukrainian emigration to North America is not a new phenomenon, the dilemmas of memory and amnesia remain crucial in Ukrainian-American émigré fiction. The paper focuses on selected novels by Askold Melnyczuk (What is Told and Ambassador of the Dead) and analyzes how traumatic memories and family stories of the past shape the American lives of Ukrainian emigrants. The discussion of the selected Ukrainian-American émigré novels focuses on the dilemmas of remembering and forgetting in the construction of both Ukrainian and American narratives of the past. The voluntary amnesia of the Ame- rican-born Ukrainians in Melnyczuk’s novels confronts their parents’ dependence on the past and their inability to abandon it emotionally. Memories of ‘the old country’ make them, similarly to Ada Kruk, ambassadors of the dead. The expression becomes a metaphoric definition of those wrapped by their repressed, fragmentary and sometimes inaccessible memories. Crucial events of European history of the 20th century are inscribed and personalized in the older generation’s stories which their children are reluctant to hear. For them, their parents’ memories became a burden and a shame. Using the concept of transgenerational memory, the paper explores the challenges of postmemory, and eventually its failure. 

scholarly journals Von Expeditionsberichten zum Führer — die Anfänge der Ratgeber für Riesengebirgereisende an der Jahrhundertwende des 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 33-53
Author(s):  
Jan Pacholski
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Special Role ◽  
The North ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Border Dispute ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nature Studies ◽  
The One ◽  
Travel Accounts

From travel accounts to guidebooks: The beginnings of guidebooks to the Giant Mountains Karkonosze for travellers in the late 18th and early 19th centuryIn the history of European tourism the Giant Mountains Karkonosze occupy a unique place thanks to the Chapel of St. Lawrence, funded by Count Christoph Leopold Schaffgotsch and located on the summit of Śnieżka. Its construction in the Habsburg dominions in the turbulent period of the Counter-Reformation was meant to finally put an end to the Silesian-Bohemian border dispute and become a visible sign of Catholic rule over the highest mountain range of the two neighbouring countries. The construction of the chapel also marked the beginning of tourism in the highest range of the Sudetes; initially, its nature was religious and focused on pilgrimages to the summit of Śnieżka, featuring, in addition to local inhabitants, also sanatorium visitors to Cieplice Warmbrunn, which was owned by the Schaffgotschs.After the three Silesian Wars, as a result of which the lands to the north of the mountains were separated from the Habsburgs’ Kingdom of Bohemia, the situation in the region changed radically. The Counter-Reformation pressure ceased and the Lutherans began to grow in importance, supported as they were by the decidedly pro-Protestant Prussian state, governed by its tolerant monarch.The period was also marked by an unprecedented growth in the literature on the Giant Mountains — there were poems Tralles, nature studies Volkmar and travel accounts GutsMuths, Troschel and others written about the highest range of the Sudetes. A special role among these writings was played by works aimed at introducing the public from the capital Berlin to the new province of the Kingdom of Prussia, especially to the mountains, so exotic from the point of view of the “groves and sands” of Brandenburg. These publications were written primarily by Lutheran clergymen, which was not without significance to the nature of the works. This was also a time when the first guidebooks to the Giant Mountains were written, with many of their authors also coming from the same milieu.What emerges from this image is a kind of confessionalisation of tourism in the highest mountains of Silesia and Bohemia: on the one hand there are mass Catholic pilgrimages and on the other — a new type of individual tourists who, with a book in hand, traverse mountain paths in a decidedly more independent fashion.

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