Lucy Talbot - MA Religion: Rhetoric and Rituals of Death 

 

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences 

Biography

Lucy Talbot works full-time while studying MA Religion: Rhetoric and Rituals of Death. She graduated from the University of Winchester with BA English and got a job to save money in order to return to the University to start the MA. By studying part-time she’s able to spread the cost of tuition fees over two years and Lucy also benefited from the University’s Alumni Scholarship.

“I’ve always been intrigued by the inevitability of death and how it’s interpreted by different religions and cultures. Death is often a taboo subject – why? Death is a certainty and it doesn’t have to be morbid. Loss and bereavement is damaging but death itself is a natural progression of life and yet often in modern western culture we deny or avoid the subject.

“The module Contemporary Approaches to Death and Dying outlines many of the main perspectives and theoretical concepts in the area of studying death. The Gothic Horror and Fairytales module was very interesting as it explored how death fits in to all kinds of outputs such as film, literature and children’s fables.

“The University hosted an international conference ‘Death Day’ this year which was a huge success and will be running again in May 2011. I presented a paper at the event exploring the representation of the dead body within slasher horror films. I am thinking about expanding this study to include religious symbolism and its relationship with death in horror film genre.

“The MA is a unique course and I plan to teach or undertake further research study into the conceptualisation of death.”