[Commlist] Call for Chapters - Difficult Death - Edited Collection

*Call for Chapters for Edited Collection*

/Difficult Death: Challenging Cultural Representations of Death, Dying 
and the Dead in Media and Culture/

Deadline: Monday 1 May 2021

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

You are invited to submit 300-word abstracts for the forthcoming edited 
collection provisionally titled /Difficult Death: Challenging Cultural 
Representations of Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture. /The 
interdisciplinary collection seeks to examine a range of representations 
of and engagement with death and dying across different media and 
cultural forms including film, television, new media, journalism, 
performing arts and literature. With a media and cultural studies focus, 
the collection will examine some of the difficulties and challenges of 
representing death, dying and the dead whilst also exploring ‘difficult’ 
and ‘challenging’ representations of these subjects as important objects 
of analysis in themselves. We welcome contributions from all disciplines 
and approaches and from those working within and beyond academia.

*Context*

Death and dying are difficult to avoid both in the global media and in 
popular culture. At times the representation of death, dying and the 
dead can be especially challenging for viewers. Yet at other times it 
can offer solace, escapism, or provoke engagement  with mortality. 
Penfold-Mounce (2018) has examined how different popular cultural texts 
can promote both ‘safe’ and ‘provocative’ morbid spaces for engagement 
with death and the dead. For those who create cultural texts, ranging 
from novels to journalism to film and television, how to engage with and 
represent death, dying and the dead also represents particular 
challenges. Often, texts can themselves be challenged by those who 
engage with them for the difficult, revealing or problematic ways that 
they represent death. For example, as Luckhurst (2016) has argued, the 
representation of the living dead in zombie horror can be read as a form 
of social realism with its own necropolitics (Mbembe, 2003). From 
depictions of real or ‘natural’ death in documentary, journalism or 
narrative to dramatic depictions of violent deaths and the (un)dead in 
literature, film and television, there is ample opportunity to explore 
the ways in which death can be represented in difficult ways, can raise 
difficult questions, and can be difficult to engage with in media and 
culture.

Writing on death spans and transcends all academic disciplines, though 
much writing has recently found a locus in the developing field of Death 
Studies. Within Journalism Studies, more might be written about the 
interactions with death that many journalists encounter and must, as 
part of their career, prepare for. From the ‘death knock’ to reporting 
sensitive and traumatic events, investigations into this aspect of 
reporting tend to offer ethical guidance (see Luce, 2019) rather than a 
full exploration of the area. More research and discussion has taken 
place around photographic journalism and its encounters with death, with 
Sontag’s /Regarding the Pain of Others / (2003) and Barthes’ /Camera 
Lucida /(2000) offering widely cited explorations of the effect of 
photographic representation of the traumatised, dying and the dead. 
There are also photographers noted for their work in this area including 
Joel-Peter Witkin, Andreas Serrano (Morgue Series), Luc Delahaye and 
Robert Capa, all who have explored death through the camera lens.

*Contributions*

Contributions might focus on:

  * Representations of death and the dead in film, television and new
    media that can be read as ‘challenging’, or that might benefit from
    being ‘challenged’
  * The challenges of reporting on death and dying
  * The ways media can shape and inform responses to death and dying
  * Cultural engagement with and representations of deaths often
    positioned or perceived as especially ‘difficult’ or ‘challenging’
    (suicide, migrant deaths)
  * Representations of ageing as a ‘problem’ in ways that conflate
    ageing and death
  * The representation of difficult choices around euthanasia and
    palliative care

At this stage, we have initial interest from two global publishers and 
will be submitting a full proposal once chapter abstracts have been 
collated. Authors will be contacted by 1 Juneto confirm whether their 
chapter has been selected and will be kept informed throughout the process.

300-word abstracts along with a brief biography of no more than 150 
words should be sent to difficultdeadbook@gmail.comby 1 May 2021.

Please send any queries to (difficultdeadbook /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(difficultdeadbook /at/ gmail.com)>

*References*

Barthes, R. (2000) /Camera Lucida/. London: Vintage.

Luce, A.  (2019) /Ethical Reporting of Sensitive Topics/. London: Routledge.

Luckhurst, R. (2016) /Zombies: A Cultural History/. London: Reaktion Books.

Mbembe, A. (2003) ‘Necropolitics’, trans. Libby Meintjes. /Public 
Culture /15.1, 11-40. Doi. 10.1215/08992363-15-1-11

Penfold-Mounce, R. (2018) /Death, the Dead and Popular Culture/. 
Bingley: Emerald.

Sontag, S. (2003) /Regarding the Pain of Others/. London: Penguin.

*Editor Biographies*

Dr. Sharon Coleclough is Senior Lecturer in Film Production and Sound 
Design at Staffordshire University. Her work combines the theory and 
practice of moving image production, and the ways in which meaning is 
created through the technical application of craft.  Recent publications 
consider the relationship of sound and the city focussing upon the city 
of Berlin, with additional journal articles exploring representation 
through the relationship of BAME actors to lighting and camera and the 
concept of the outsider in cinema and television.  A contributor to the 
Learning on Screen (LoS) inspiring lecture series, Sharon’s work was 
also selected as the LoS’s contribution to Black History Month, 2020. 
She has a forthcoming chapter in the MacFarland Press publication The 
Theology of Zombies in which she explores the concept of the sentient 
zombie in television. Sharon works internationally on a collaborative 
digital project, “The Laptop Tour” which considers the ways performance 
can be realised through the use of technology.

Dr. Bethan Michael-Fox, FRSA, SFHEA, works as an Associate Lecturer for 
the Open University, teaching a range of English literature, creative 
writing, interdisciplinary humanities and reflective learning modules. 
She is an Honorary Associate in the School of English and Creative 
Writing at the Open University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the 
University of Bath’s Centre for Death and Society (CDAS). She is the 
Editorial Officer for Mortality, a Taylor and Francis journal promoting 
the interdisciplinary study of death and dying, and a representative for 
the Association for the Study of Death and Society (ASDS). She is 
currently working on a project on the representation of student suicide 
in documentary television with Dr Kay Calver at the University of 
Northampton. She is also editing a special issue of the academic journal 
Revenant with Dr Renske Visser and has published a range of academic 
journal articles, book chapters and an edited collection.

Dr. Renske Visser is a Research Fellow at the University of Surrey, 
currently conducting research on cancer care in English prisons. She 
completed her PhD on homemaking in later life at the Centre for Death 
and Society at the University of Bath.  Her background is in Medical 
Anthropology and she has a wide interest in issues around ageing, dying 
and death, particularly in the role of place and space in shaping end of 
life experiences. Her Master’s explored the way parentally bereaved 
Dutch young adults continue bonds with their lost parent through the use 
of material culture. She has published a range of academic articles in 
journals such as Mortality, Death Studies, Home Cultures and The Journal 
of Mental Health and is currently co-editing a special issue on Death in 
the Margins with Dr Candi Cann and a special issue on Death and the 
Screen with Dr Beth Michael-Fox. She is also the Postdoctoral 
Representative of the Association for the Study of Death and Society (ASDS).

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