Musicology

Dying, death and grief have to be regarded as fundamental aspects of cultural coexistence because humans cannot avoid dealing with them when they live with others. A diminishing circle of friends and family, the pain of loss, the transformation of a living being into a dead body, the symbols and rituals of saying farewell to the deceased, plus the contribution of medical, religious and other forms of expertise along with many other aspects reveal, on the one hand, the potential of the utter devastation a person’s death can trigger. On the other, these forms of expression and modes of behaviour also underline that dying and death are not purely natural occurrences. They transpire amid societal mechanisms which reflect a large and, at times, contradictory variety of reflective processes in addressing the finite nature of life. Death is a human’s greatest certainty in life. In this respect, the series of publications Thanatological Studies provides a forum for both theoretical and empirical works which address the social, normative, aesthetic, spiritual, bodily, psychological and other facets of death and dying, and by extension grief and remembrance, from the perspectives of different academic disciplines.

The series focusses on the relation between law, ethics and society in the Middle East and in North Africa. It contains works that combine two or more research approaches or works that are situated at the intersection between two or more disciplines, like Middle Eastern Studies and History, Islamic Studies and Gender Studies, Law and Medicine. Books that are based on a differentiated set of sources, ranging from textual to oral sources, are welcome. The series will include excellent PhD dissertations and habilitations, but also monographs and edited collections. On the chronological perspective, books from the pre-modern up to the modern and contemporary era are published. The books will be published in German, English and Italian language.