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.

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.

Oliver Leaman is a professor of philosophy and Zantker Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Kentucky and co-editor of Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, which describes a history of American funeral practices.

Maurice Lamm is an Orthodox rabbi and lecturer at Yeshiva University in New York, N.Y. He is author of The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning (Jonathan David Publishers, 2000).

M. Macha NightMare is co-author of The Pagan Book of Living and Dying (HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) and is an expert on neo-pagan death and funerary practices. She lives in San Rafael, Calif. Contact her via her website.

Kimberley Campbell runs Memorial Ecosystems Inc., a company that promotes using memorial parks to restore and protect nature by allowing only biodegradable caskets. It is based in Westminster, S.C.

Bob Boetticher is Vice Chairman/CEO of the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston.

Jessica Koth is public relations manager for the National Funeral Directors Association, an organization of mostly independent funeral home operators, based in Brookfield, Wis. She can discuss the influence that the needs of different ethnic and religious groups have had on funeral directors and their services.