Ep377 – Administration of Death – Kelsey Moriarty

About this episode

Kelsey Moriarty discusses the impact of bureaucracy on grief during and after the First World War.

In this episode of the Western Front Association’s Mentioned in Dispatches, Kelsey Moriarty examines the bureaucratic and cultural processes that reshaped grief during and after the First World War. Her thesis Kafka in the Trenches: Death, Bureaucracy, and the Written Record in Britain 1914–1920 explores how official letters, forms and memorials affected the experience of mourning. From government notices of death to the rise of street shrines, her research highlights how state systems collided with private grief and altered the citizen–state relationship.

People in this episode

Host: Dr Tom Thorpe

Guest: Kelsey Moriarty

Topics covered

• grief
• First World War
• bureaucracy
• cultural processes
• mourning
• citizen-state relationship

Keywords

• grief
• First World War
• bureaucracy
• mourning
• state systems
• citizen-state relationship
• memorials

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Western Front Association

Books & works: Kafka in the Trenches: Death, Bureaucracy, and the Written Record in Britain 1914–1920

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