Books
Public Media
Hannig, Anita. “My toddler likes to talk about death. So do I.” Cognoscenti, October 22, 2025.
Hannig, Anita. “Demedicalising dying: medicine must accept death as a natural part of life.” British Medical Journal (BMJ), December 12, 2024.
Hannig, Anita. “The Case for Assisted Dying.” Newsweek, February 14, 2024.
Hannig, Anita. “What Is The Right To Die And Why Does It Matter?” Dead and Buried, PBS Voices, December 7, 2023. Writer.
Hannig, Anita. “What Happens to Your Digital Footprint After Death?” Dead and Buried, PBS Voices, November 9, 2023. Writer.
Hannig, Anita. “Is There a Right Way to Grieve?” Dead and Buried, PBS Voices, October 12, 2023. Writer.
Hannig, Anita. “Abortion-rights opponents don’t understand that death―like life―is sacred.” Cognoscenti, June 23, 2023.
Hannig, Anita. “Walking toward a Good Death.” Book excerpt from The Day I Die, Brandeis Magazine, Summer, 2022.
Hannig, Anita. “When abortion is ‘an unimaginable act of surrender.” Cognoscenti, July 7, 2022.
Hannig, Anita. “Medical aid in dying is still called ‘assisted suicide’; an anthropologist explains the problem with that.” The Conversation, July 6, 2022.
Hannig, Anita. “Living with the Prospect of Assisted Dying.” Book excerpt from The Day I Die, SAPIENS, June 15, 2022.
Hannig, Anita. “On my first Mother’s Day, I’m honoring the profound link between birth and death.” Cognoscenti, May 6, 2022.
Hannig, Anita. “Nothin’ about the Blues.” Book excerpt from The Day I Die, Next Avenue, May 3, 2022.
Hannig, Anita. “Allow terminally ill patients from out of state to access aid-in-dying.” The Seattle Times, April 4, 2022.
Hannig, Anita. “Dying Virtually: Pandemic Drives Medically Assisted Deaths Online.” The Conversation, June 2, 2020. Republished by The National Interest.
Hannig, Anita. “COVID-19 Won’t Let Us Forget Our Maddening, Precious Mortality.” Cognoscenti, May 4, 2020.
Hannig, Anita. “The Complicated Science of a Medically Assisted Death.” Quillette, March 18, 2020.
Hannig, Anita. “Assisted Dying Is Not the Easy Way Out.” The Conversation, February 18, 2020. Republished by The National Interest under “7 in 10 Americans Support ‘Assisted Dying.’ Here Is What You Don’t Realize.”
Hannig, Anita. “How Our Assisted Dying Laws Work Against Some People Who Suffer The Most.” Cognoscenti, February 4, 2020.
Hannig, Anita. “Death and Dying 101.” SAPIENS, October 3, 2017.
Republished by Undark Magazine under “Talking about Death: An Anthropologist’s View.”
Featured in The New York Times “What We’re Reading” section.
Podcasts & TV & Miscellany
“‘Just support her’: Brittany Maynard’s husband says medical aid in dying helped him grieve.” Interview for USA TODAY, June 16, 2025.
“His sick wife asked him to kill her. Now that she’s gone, he says the loneliness is worse.” Interview for USA TODAY, June 11, 2025.
“Assisted Dying.” Times Radio Drive, hosted by Ayesha Hazarika, November 30, 2024.
“The Day I Die with author Anita Hannig.” The Morbidly Curious Book Club Podcast, hosted by Patricia “Patches” Brown, June 30, 2024.
“How doulas and cafes help people break the last taboo—talking about death.” Interview for The Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 2024.
“The complicated lives and deaths of TikTok’s illness influencers.” Interview for Vox, January 22, 2024.
“Examining the continuing resistance to medically-assisted death.” All Sides with Anna Staver, hosted by Anna Staver. WOSU Public Media, January 10, 2024.
“How medical aid in dying is bringing autonomy to end-of-life decisions.” 1A , hosted by Jenn White, December 13, 2023.
“How Aid in Dying Became Medical, Not Moral.” Interview for The New York Times, October 24, 2023.
“Model Ali Tate Cutler’s grandmother is choosing to die on her own terms. Here’s what you need to know about medically assisted death.” Interview for Yahoo!Life, May 25, 2023.
“Will added restrictions help Connecticut’s new medical aid-in-dying bill pass this time around?” Where We Live, Connecticut Public Radio WNPR, February 8, 2023.
“The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America.” New York Journal of Books book review, Karl Wolff, 2022.
“The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America.” End of Life Choices California book review, Fran Moreland Johns, September 12, 2022.
“The Story Of Medically Assisted Death In America.” Diane Rehm: On My Mind podcast, hosted by Diane Rehm, September 2, 2022.
“What You Need to Know about Medical Aid in Dying: A Discussion with Author Anita Hannig.” The Heart of Hospice podcast, hosted by Jerry Fenter and Helen Bauer, August 1, 2022.
“Aid in Dying Laws.” Interview with host Ethan Elkind for State of the Bay, KALW Public Media, May 23, 2022.
“‘We Have to Make a Concerted Effort to Be Less Alienated from Death and Dying.'” Interview for Next Avenue, May 3, 2022.
“Too many Americans still can’t talk about death, even after 15 months of pandemic.” Interview for The Boston Globe, June 1, 2021.
“The coronavirus is forcing Americans to reckon with death like never before.” Interview for Insider, July 15, 2020.
“Pandemic narrows Americans’ cultural distance from death and dying.” Interview for the National Catholic Reporter, March 30, 2020.
“Website that helps you plan for death finds success with millennials.” Interview for Mashable, March 11, 2020.
“Would you lie to your loved one about dying? Awkwafina’s ‘The Farewell’ raises complex questions.” Interview for USA TODAY, 2019.
“Thinking through Medical Aid-in-Dying.” Interview for Cultural Anthropology, June 21, 2019.
“Bodies: Ghostbot.” Flash Forward podcast, hosted by Rose Eveleth, June 11, 2019.
“How Death Disappeared from Halloween.” Interview for The Washington Post, October 31, 2018.
“White Noise”. Long Before the End podcast, hosted by Michael Hamilton and Jed Beitler, 2018.
“Beyond Surgery.” New Books Network podcast, hosted by Erin Freas-Smith, July 10, 2017.
“Last Rights.” Interview for Chronicle, WCVB Channel Five, hosted by Anthony Everett, 2017.
“The Craft of Writing.” This Anthro Life podcast, hosted by Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins, 2017.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Hannig, Anita. 2019. “Author(iz)ing Death: Medical Aid-in-Dying and the Morality of Suicide.” Cultural Anthropology 34(1): 53–77.
Heller, Alison, and Anita Hannig. 2017. “Unsettling the Fistula Narrative: Cultural Pathology, Biomedical Redemption, and Inequities of Health Access in Niger and Ethiopia.” Anthropology & Medicine 24(1): 81-95.
Hannig, Anita. 2015. “Sick Healers: Chronic Affliction and the Authority of Experience at an Ethiopian Hospital.” American Anthropologist 117(4): 640–651.
Hannig, Anita. 2014. “Spiritual Border Crossings: Childbirth, Postpartum Seclusion, and Religious Alterity in Amhara, Ethiopia.” Africa 84(2): 294–313.
Hannig, Anita. 2013. “The Pure and the Pious: Corporeality, Flow, and Transgression in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.” Journal of Religion in Africa 43(3): 297–328.
Chapters in Edited Volumes
Hannig, Anita. 2022. “Science and Sanctity: Biomedicine and Christianity at an Ethiopian Hospital.” In The Work of Hospitals: Global Medicine in Local Cultures. William Olsen and Carolyn Sargent, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Pp. 34-48.
Anita Hannig 