The purpose of this paper is to relate the rituals of death practised in the Monks’ Republic of Mount Athos in northern Greece, and to reflect on them as an academic. To do this fifty days and nights were spent on the Holy Mountain conducting ethnography; this enabled both the monks’ enactments to be captured and their interpretations recorded. The monastic rituals of death on Mount Athos are presented according to three emergent, paradoxical themes. These are that death is: both near and far; both a blessing and a tragedy; both uniting and dividing. The paper, the first study of monastic rituals of death on Mount Athos, then reflects on these themes in relation to being an academic, concluding that the limited commemoration of our colleagues in universities is intertwined with the slow death of the academic vocation.

This article is a performance poetry piece that describes my experiences of loss at my mother's death. Specifically, the article draws attention to how an immigrant’s grief can be further compounded by having to bid farewell to their loved ones from a land that is far away from their home country where the death of their loved one occurs.
Immigration/work status intersects with socioeconomic status to create barriers to the individual’s ability to travel home to partake in their loved one’s funeral rites. In light of current immigration flows to Canada such conversations are essential to create grief interventions that are timely and culturally appropriate.

This paper explores post-humanist assemblage and biomediation through ontological storytelling and antenarrative. It considers material agency via biomediation, examining the use of material devices to prolong and enhance human and animal life. The first ontological story presented is that of a woman and her biomediated dog (titanium knees), running in an urban setting with various material actants in assemblage supporting human health and psychological wellbeing. The second considers the use and efficacy of biomediation to prolong the lives of humans afflicted with renal disease and cancer. The work offers an experiential lens for contemplation of biomediation, assemblage, posthumanism and ethics. Its contribution is an authentic, contextual exploration of Heidegger’s (1962) Dasein and a related antenarrative fore-having of metanoia-derived strength. These illustrations support discussion of how material (ontic) and ontological (Being-there) aspects are overlooked or actively suppressed by social constructionism.

This is a poem titled "Wearing My Dead"

In this essay, I will look closer at the death of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who committed suicide in 1995. I will scrutinize his death in concordance with his philosophical thoughts, but frame my gaze within Albert Camus’ well-known openingquestion from The Myth of Sisyphus: “Judging whether life is worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy” (Camus, 2005:1).

Jokes are as well a part of an everyday life, as a source of knowledge about the society as well. They are not only to amuse but might also integrate groups or societies, inspire reflection, relieve tension, or even point out the incongruities in cosmologies or dogma. Jokes often concern mattes of relationships, religion, politics, or everyday human life, and jokes on death often relate to all of the indicated areas of human existence. Improper as it might seem, joking on death may play an important part in human life. However jokes on such a delicate issue might sometimes be perceived as offensive, a suggestion of investigating the mere idea or image of death underwritten in jokes appears much tempting. Therefore through text and content analysis of approximate 70 jokes on death from a few internet websites, the hidden definition of death was attempted to be reconstructed together with the socially accepted attitude towards death and its conventions concerning the rites de passage.

Sometimes, trauma strikes with a momentous vengeance and many are injured and killed at once. These mass casualty incidents have to be addressed by a multi-array of professionals such as law enforcement, emergency care workers, and those who are immediately on the scene to use their mental and physical laurels to deal with the situation. Some argue that mass death tears communities apart. The theory is that an area can only stand so much devastation. With the stress of the catastrophe more destruction will arise by the people themselves. What are the procedures and polices of dealing with a mass fatality event? The tornado tragedy in Riegelwood, North Carolina is an excellent case study for a multi-death disaster scene in the rural setting. This prompted an inquiry in to the larger issues of death whether in a small town or world setting.