Changing configurations of Día de Muertos during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico and beyond
Changing configurations of Día de Muertos during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico and beyond
This pioneering book offers insights into new configurations of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) during the COVID-19 pandemic within wider considerations of how the pandemic has shaped ideas about death and dying differently. It explores how commemorative and mourning practices changed during the turbulent years of 2020–21 and asks how the festival contributed to conversations on global issues such as grief, mental health, exhaustion, and gender-based violence in Mexico and through its transnational case studies in the UK and Ireland. Based on original textual and visual analysis alongside the authors' close collaboration with Mexican communities in Ireland and the UK, the book engages with a range of Día de Muertos expressions including film, masks, marches, altar-building, dance performance, calavera (skull) poetry production and online community and home-based creative gestures. Through this analysis, we investigate how Mexicans and Mexicans abroad engaged with the rich compendium of Día de Muertos symbolic and narrative systems in order to discuss how the pandemic has framed ideas around loss and renewal more widely.
Lavery, Jane
d050c560-2005-4f27-bb70-c79f12f39e93
Finnegan, Nuala
1071b6b0-86f4-412c-a824-ef94968a193e
2025
Lavery, Jane
d050c560-2005-4f27-bb70-c79f12f39e93
Finnegan, Nuala
1071b6b0-86f4-412c-a824-ef94968a193e
Lavery, Jane and Finnegan, Nuala
(2025)
Changing configurations of Día de Muertos during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico and beyond
,
Palgrave Macmillan, 295pp.
Abstract
This pioneering book offers insights into new configurations of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) during the COVID-19 pandemic within wider considerations of how the pandemic has shaped ideas about death and dying differently. It explores how commemorative and mourning practices changed during the turbulent years of 2020–21 and asks how the festival contributed to conversations on global issues such as grief, mental health, exhaustion, and gender-based violence in Mexico and through its transnational case studies in the UK and Ireland. Based on original textual and visual analysis alongside the authors' close collaboration with Mexican communities in Ireland and the UK, the book engages with a range of Día de Muertos expressions including film, masks, marches, altar-building, dance performance, calavera (skull) poetry production and online community and home-based creative gestures. Through this analysis, we investigate how Mexicans and Mexicans abroad engaged with the rich compendium of Día de Muertos symbolic and narrative systems in order to discuss how the pandemic has framed ideas around loss and renewal more widely.
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More information
In preparation date: 20 September 2022
Accepted/In Press date: 1 October 2025
Published date: 2025
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 475648
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/475648
PURE UUID: 2b2d626d-9671-47b7-91ac-a80080d5b0f2
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Date deposited: 23 Mar 2023 17:44
Last modified: 26 Mar 2025 17:41
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Author:
Nuala Finnegan
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