Call for papers: “The Undead” theme issue of Thanatos 1/2019
Thanatos is a peer-reviewed, multi-disciplinary open access journal published by the Finnish Death Studies Association. The theme of the Thanatos spring issue in 2019 will be “The Undead”.
The phenomenon of undead – the deceased who are absent, yet simultaneously present in the minds of the living by affecting their perceived realities – is known in various cultural and historical contexts. Revenants, living dead, ghosts, wraiths, vampires, ancestor spirits, saintly apparitions, restless souls, zombies, corpses reanimated by magic, decapitated heads that speak, angels – death has not always been seen as the terminal point in public imaginations; the dead do not always stop living or cease to be. They may manifest physically or appear as incorporeal beings; they may be passive objects or active agents. Sometimes the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead is crossed in dreams, visions and apparitions, or through various ritualistic means.