The distinctions and similarities among Roman, Jewish, and Christian burials can provide evidence of social networks, family life, and, perhaps, religious sensibilities. Is the Roman development from columbaria to catacombs the result of evolving religious identities or simply a matter of a change in burial fashions? Do the material remains from Jewish burials evidence an adherence to ancient customs, or the adaptation of rituals from surrounding cultures? What Greco-Roman funerary images were taken over and "baptized" as Christian ones? The answers to these and other questions require that the material culture be viewed, whenever possible, in situ, through multiple disciplinary lenses and in light of ancient texts. Roman historians (John Bodel, Richard Saller, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill), archaeologists (Susan Stevens, Amy Hirschfeld), scholars of rabbinic period Judaism (Deborah Green), Christian history (Robin M. Jensen), and the New Testament (David Balch, Laurie Brink, O.P., Margaret M. Mitchell, Carolyn Osiek, R.S.C.J.) engaged in a research trip to Rome and Tunisia to investigate imperial period burials first hand. Commemorting the Dead is the result of a three year scholarly conversation on their findings.

The Book of Donors for Strasbourg cathedral is an extraordinary medieval document dating from ca. 1320-1520, with 6,954 entries from artisan, merchant and aristocratic classes. These individuals listed gifts to the cathedral construction fund given in exchange for prayers for the donors' souls. The construction administrators (the Oeuvre Notre-Dame) also built a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the nave that housed the book and showcased prayers and masses for the building benefactors. Chapel, book and west front project formed a three part commemorative strategy that appealed to the faithful of the city and successfully competed against other religious establishments also offering memorial services. Charlotte A. Stanford's study is the first to comprehensively analyze the unpublished Book of Donors manuscript and show the types and patterns of gifts made to the cathedral. It also compares these gift entries with those in earlier obituary records kept by the cathedral canons, as well as other medieval obituary notices kept by parish churches and convents in Strasbourg. Analysis of the Book of Donors notes the increase of personal details and requests in fifteenth-century entries and discusses the different memorial opportunities available to the devout. This study draws a vivid picture of life in late medieval Strasbourg as seen through the lens of devotional and memorial practices, and will be of particular interest to scholars of art history, memory, and medieval urban life.

In his estimation, Northerners were just as active as Southerners in myth-making after the war. Crafting a "Cause Victorious" myth that was every bit as resonant and powerful as the much better-known "Lost Cause" myth cherished by Southerners, the North asserted through commemorations the existence of a loyal and reunified nation long before it was actually a fact. Neff reveals that as Northerners and Southerners honored their separate dead, they did so in ways that underscore the limits of reconciliation between Union and Confederate veterans, whose mutual animosities lingered for many decades after the need of the war. Ultimately, Neff argues that the process of reunion and reconciliation that has been so much the focus of recent literature either neglects or dismisses the persistent reluctance of both Northerners and Southerners to "forgive and forget," especially where their dead were concerned.

This book is the first comprehensive survey of the commemoration and collective memory of the French Revolution.

Death and dying were not in the main focus of the denominational conflicts of the 16th century. However, pious literature covered these topics again and again, not only before the Reformation, but after it as well. Here, certain denominational differences are clearly visible. Partly, these differences consist in the use of genres: For example, funeral sermons are an often used genre among Lutherans, while they are much rarer in the Reformed tradition. Similar differences can be observed concerning epitaphs. In Roman Catholic areas, funeral sermons and epitaphs are common in the 16th century, too; but their religious function is often a different from the one in Lutheranism. Beyond such interdenominational differences, there are also interesting continuities and connections which the contributors of the volume analyze. For example, there is a certain continuity between 16th century Lutheran funeral sermons and the late medieval tradition of ars moriendi.The volume contains papers presented at the Second RefoRC Conference in Oslo in 2012, and is characterized by a multiconfessional and multidisciplinary approach, with contributions from Church History, Art History, Archaeology, History of Literature and Cultural History. Within a field of research dominated by specialized contributions (e.g. on ars moriendi traditions or on specific traditions of funeral monuments and funeral sermons), the broad approach of this volume may further stimulate to comparative and cross-confessional reflection.

Provides a brief description of what the Day of the Dead holiday is, how it started, and ways people celebrate it.

Military Pilgrimage and Battlefield Tourism is the first volume to bring together a detailed analysis of professional military pilgrimage with other forms of commemorating military conflict. The volume looks beyond the discussion of battlefield tourism undertaken primarily by civilians which has dominated research until now through an analysis of the relationship between religious, military and civilian participants. Drawing on a comparative approach towards what has mostly been categorised as secular pilgrimage, dark tourism/thanatourism, military and religious tourism, and re-enactment, the contributors explore the varied ways in which memory, material culture and rituals are performed at particular places. The volume also engages with the debate about the extent to which western definitions of pilgrimage and tourism, as well as such related terms as religion, sacred and secular, can be applied in non-western contexts.