The vital dead : making meaning, identity, and community through cemeteries / Alison Bell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bell, Alison (Alison Kay), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cemeteries--Social aspects--Shenandoah River Valley Region (Va. and W. Va.).

Cemeteries.

Sepulchral monuments--Shenandoah River Valley Region (Va. and W. Va.).

Sepulchral monuments.

Shenandoah River Valley (Va. and W. Va.)--Social life and customs.

Shenandoah River Valley (Va. and W. Va.).

Manners and customs.

United States--Shenandoah River Valley.

Physical Description:

xv, 272 pages : illustrations, maps ; 27 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Knoxville : The University of Tennessee Press, [2022]

Summary:

"This book builds on recent anthropological work to explore the social and cultural dynamics of cemetery practice and its transformation over generations in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Anthropologist Alison Bell finds that people are using material culture-images and epitaphs on grave markers, as well as objects they leave on graves-to assert and maintain relationships and fight against alienation. She draws on fieldwork, interviews, archival sources, and disciplinary insights to show how cemeteries both reveal and participate in the grassroots cultural work of crafting social connections, assessing the transcendental durability of the deceased person, and asserting particular cultural values. The book's chapters range across cemetery types, focusing on African American burials, grave sites of institutionalized individuals, and modern community memorials"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: ch. 1 "Green Sod Above, Lie Light, Lie Light": Meeting the Valley Dead

ch. 2 "Give This Man His Wings": Imagining Lives and the Afterlife

ch. 3 "The Wrong Kind of Creature for This World": Asylum Cemeteries

ch. 4 "The Colored Dead": African American Burying Grounds

ch. 5 "The Bivouac of the Dead": Military Conflicts and Cemeteries

ch. 6 "Don't Forget about Daddy and Me": Reunions of the Quick and the Dead

ch. 7 "She Had an Affinity for Snowmen and Roosters": Relational Identities

ch. 8 "The Grasshopper Not the Ant": The Ludic, Populist Cemetery.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Bell, Alison (Alison Kay). Vital dead

ISBN:

9781621906964

1621906965

OCLC:

1344158260