23/07/2026

CfP Mediapolis: “Urban Deathscapes: Media, Spaces of Death, and the Contemporary City”

Mediapolis Themed Dossier: “Urban Deathscapes: Media, Spaces of Death, and the Contemporary City” (Vol. 11, No. 3)

Edited by: Susana Viegas (NOVA FCSH)

Every city must negotiate the place of its dead. Cemeteries, crematoria, memorial parks, roadside shrines, temporary memorials, and other deathscapes form an often-overlooked layer of the urban fabric, revealing how societies negotiate memory, ecology, religion, politics, and everyday life. Whether depicting deathscapes as places of dwelling, as in Sérgio Tréfaut’ s "The City of the Dead" (2011), or as destinations of travel, as in Roberto Rossellini’s "Journey to Italy" (1954), media reveal the many ways in which spaces of the dead participate in the social, cultural, and political life of cities. Documentary and fiction films, photography, television, digital media, video games, and social media not only represent urban deathscapes but also influence how they are experienced, imagined, and transformed. 

This dossier seeks contributions that examine how media engage with urban deathscapes across historical and contemporary contexts. We welcome contributions from scholars working across film and media studies, urban studies, geography, architecture, anthropology, death studies, environmental humanities, memory studies, and related fields. 

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Housing, everyday life, and communities in spaces of the dead;
  • Tourism, pilgrimage, walking, and travel through urban deathscapes;
  • Colonial cemeteries, military cemeteries, contested memorials, and unmarked graves;
  • Green burial, biodiversity, and environmental transformations;
  • Representations of urban deathscapes in cinema, photography, television, digital media, and video games;
  • Heritage, ruins, archaeology, memory, and the coexistence of multiple urban pasts;

Please submit an abstract (maximum 300 words) and a short biography (maximum 100 words) to Susana Viegas (filmdeath@fcsh.unl.pt) by 10 September 2026.

Authors will be notified shortly after the deadline. Full articles (maximum 3,000 words, including references, following the Chicago Manual of Style, notes and bibliography system) will be due 1 November 2026 and will undergo anonymous peer review.

Click here to read the full call.

📷 Viaggio in Italia [1954], by Roberto Rossellini

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07/08/2026

“Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films” is out now!

We are pleased to announce the completion of the Special Issue “Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films”, guest edited by Vasco Baptista Marques and Susana Viegas for Arts. The Special Issue brings together seven original articles examining testament films from a philosophical perspective. Rather than approaching filmmakers’ final works merely as […]
06/08/2026

New Open Access publication by Susana Viegas

We are pleased to share that the book chapter “Derrida on Cinema’s Spectral Images: Time, Repetition, and Belief” by PI Susana Viegas is now available in Open Access through the publisher Brill. Published in “Derrida and Film Studies”, edited by Kamil Lipiński and Andrzej Marzec (Brill, 2025), the chapter explores Jacques Derrida’s reflections on cinema […]
06/08/2026

Join us at the Goethe-Institut Portugal for the cycle “Falar sobre a morte (nunca matou ninguém)”!

Organized by the Goethe-Institut Portugal, with contributions from the FILM AND DEATH team, Death Café, the association Doulas do Fim da Vida, and many other partners, the festival Falar sobre a morte (nunca matou ninguém) [Speaking About Death (Never Killed Anyone)] will open on September 17 at 5:00 pm with the interactive sound installation Memorial […]
03/08/2026

Join Anderson Santos and Lucas Ferraço Nassif at the Centro Português de Psicanálise

On September 1, 7:00 PM, the Centro Português de Psicanálise (R. da Assunção 7, 2º) will host a talk by Anderson Santos, moderated by Lucas Ferraço Nassif, on “Félix Guattari: Psicanálise e o Paradigma Ético-Estético”. This presentation will be in Portuguese. This presentation addresses the shift initiated by Félix Guattari within psychoanalysis, as he proposes […]
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Funded by the European Union (ERC, FILM AND DEATH, 101088956). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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