Mériam Belli

Research project

Death in Transit

Project summary

While historians have of yet paid little attention to the history of modern death within transient and transnational communities, such literature is practically absent for the history of the Middle East and North Africa. My project seeks to fill in this gap as it explores largely uncharted historical territory. I bring together areas of research that have been studied in isolation from one another. I use a multidisciplinary, transnational, transcultural approach to the history of death and dying that binds past and present, Europe and Asia, and varied (Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) religious and cultural traditions. I use not only historical, but also ethnographic, and sociological research methods. At the end, a study of transnational death provides a new lens on life, on the history of mobility, and on the networks that connects culture, technology, and politics. My overall project tackles diverse facets of death and dying, including international legislation, science and technology, theology and religious practices, civil and military cemeteries, and memorial and burial politics. With research on the first part of my book project virtually completed, and given Iméra support, I will turn to the second part, which addresses the changes brought about in eschatological beliefs, and mortuary practices and imaginations, in postcolonial spaces. The large drivers of change are science and technology, but also migration and the market economy. I intend to tackle the international funerary industry and its ancillary arts of body conservation, alteration, and beautification.