Podcasts about living funeral directors

SHOW SPONSOR SHGAPE & The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive EraI have never thought of funeral directors as the preservationists of Gilded Age architecture, but they are. Thanks to Dr. Dean Lampros's cross-disciplinary research on the cultural history of these residential funeral parlours we see the remnants of the Gilded Age in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Dean joins me to discuss his new book, and the amazing research he has compiled.Essential Reading:Dean Lampros, Preserved: A Cultural History of the Funeral Home in America (2024).Recommended Reading:Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Death (1963). Stephen Prothero, Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America (2002).Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2004).Gary Laderman, Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America (2005).Marilyn Yalom, The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds (2008).Suzanne Smith, To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death (2010).Michael Rosenow, Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865 – 1920 (2015).Caitlin Doughty, From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (2018). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death with Suzanne E. Smith   Suzanne E. Smith is Professor of History in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University.  Her first book, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (2000), examines Motown and its relationship to the black community of Detroit and the civil rights movement.  It was awarded third in the eleventh annual Gleason Music Book Awards, sponsored by NYU, Rolling Stone, and BMI.  Her latest book, To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death (2010), explores the role of funeral directors in African American life and their participation in the national civil rights movement.  To Serve the Living was a finalist for the Library of Virginia's Non-Fiction Literary Award in 2011.  Her current book project is a biography of the African American radio evangelist, Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux.  

Chris Gondek interviews Suzanne E. Smith, the author of To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death.

Chris Gondek interviews Suzanne E. Smith, the author of To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death.

Chris Gondek interviews Suzanne E. Smith, the author of To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death.

Chris Gondek interviews Suzanne E. Smith, the author of To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death.