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(Archive) Pre-Occupied

a book series of obituaries examining familial roles

This project was part of DDW 2020
Twelve Obituaries: coded and revisualized. — © Hilary Short

‘Pre’ alludes to these roles being determined for us before our births and upheld/passed down through the family that teaches us (i.e. heteronormative patriarchy); ‘Occupy’ alludes to the oppressive value system that determines what is waged work and what is unwaged work (i.e. capitalism).

Six contemporary obituaries were selected for content analysis. Some were digitized PDFs of the newspaper, retaining its column format, others were HTML. Six ‘wife of’ obituaries were matched with their husbands, making 12 total.

Through a content anal

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Reader as Analyst: guided reading. — © Hilary Short

Color-coded Visual Structure. — © Hilary Short

Twelve Subtitles: declarative phrases. — © Hilary Short

Aggregating the Data: looking for patterns.