Critical approaches to death studies: a conversation

In this transcribed conversation, the authors explore critical perspectives as sources of innovation within death studies. Specifically, they identify five directions for integrating decolonial, transnational feminist, and queer approaches into the field in order to foreground the experiences of diverse and marginalised groups across the globe. They suggest that scholars make an effort to (1) strengthen the field’s interdisciplinarity, particularly the contributions of anthropology, history, and sociology, (2) resituate work within those disciplines in ways that better facilitate contributions to death studies discourse, (3) challenge methodological conventions that reify academic expertise and disregard scholars’ own social locations and subjectivities, (4) restructure the death studies canon to fully incorporate the voices of historically marginalised groups, and (5) ask critical questions of our disciplines, including questions that call for cross-disciplinary collaboration.