Ronald Barrett is a psychology professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is an expert on African-American contemporary funeral practices.

Dave Burrell is a historian for Historical Insights who has studied American funeral practices and written four papers on the subject. He says one of the major shifts in American funerals and attitudes toward death are that the body is now seen as “symbolically empty.” He lives in the Denver area.

Corky Ra is the founder of Summum, a nonprofit organization in Salt Lake City that offers mummification services. The group bills itself as “the source of all spiritual progression.” The mummification process involves soaking the body in embalming fluid, wrapping it in gauze and covering it with polyurethane before installing it in a bronze casing that […]

Rochelle Millen is a religion professor at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, and author of Women, Birth, and Death in Jewish Law and Practice (University Press of New England, 2004), which examines the role of women in Jewish funerals.

Jonathan C. Smith is an assistant professor of American studies at St. Louis University and is researching African-American funerary customs.  

Masih Siddiqi is a member of the Islamic Center of Naperville, Ill., where he is part of a group that coordinates Muslim burial services. The center has contracted with two local funeral homes to use their facilities to wash (khusl) and dress (kafan) the bodies.

Brendan Freeman is a Cistercian monk and abbot of New Melleray Abbey, a community of about 30 monks in Peosta, Iowa. The monks hand-make wooden caskets and urns that they bill as a “soulful alternative” to more elaborate caskets.

Michael Kearl is a professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and an expert on death and dying in America and around the world. He has maintained an extensive website on the sociology of death and dying that includes a good deal about funerals and burials.

Qadeer Qazi is a Muslim and a funeral director at Rahma Funeral Home in Dallas. He writes about Muslim burial practices.