Aubrey DeVeny Incorvaia, the newest Ph.D. graduate in the School of Public Policy, recently published an article in OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying. The piece, “Death Positivity in America: The Movement — Its History and Literature,” is based off of Incorvaia’s dissertation on the positive death movement, which she successfully defended in Spring 2022.

In the article, Incorvaia outlines the history of death culture in America, starting in the 1700s and going through the present day. She then details the contemporary positive death movement, which she argues is marked by “lauding death and the dying process as a non-medical, natural event, which should be personal, de-institutionalized, and engaged in the psychosocial emotional landscape.” She outlines why this shift may have occurred, as well as what policies and programs have been put in place since.

“Research opportunities abound as diffuse movement actors engage death and dying in new ways,” Incorvaia writes. “Examples presented in this article include communal functions that place death center-stage (i.e., death cafes and death over dinner events), development of end-of-life doula services, passage of medical aid in dying legislation, increased attention toward a little-known end-of-life option, voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, and new possibilities for body disposition, such as human composting and water cremation.”

Read the full article at https://doi.org/10.1177/00302228221085176.