Do we deny death? I. A genealogy of death denial.

The following is a two-part article on the 'death-denial' thesis, namely the assumption that modern Western societies seek to deny and conceal the reality of death. The first part of the article gives a chronological overview of Anglophone and French literature on the thesis, focussing on its development and pervasiveness in the disciplines of history and sociology. In the second part of the article, published in a subsequent issue of this journal, we summarise the critiques to the said thesis. We also assess its present state in the social sciences and point to new paths for the future of death studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]