Academics undertake considerable efforts in order to define positions for themselves and for their peers that are meaningful and convey who they “are”. The current article examines how academics manage the practical task of making sense of one another by analyzing the way in which academic obituaries beget and consecrate research biographies. A qualitative analysis of 216 obituaries published in academic journals from the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, in physics, history, and sociology, and from the 1960s to the 2000s reveals (e)valuative practices that consecrate academic subjects. The results demonstrate how obituaries: (1) categorize academic subjects by positioning them within spheres of academic knowledge and institutional posts, and (2) legitimize academic subjects by applying biographical narratives of talent and merit. This biographical (e)valuation evokes naturally talented, highly devoted academic subjects with coherent research profiles, and omits both biographical hurdles and the decedent’s gender and class. The insights shed light on underlying academic virtues and values.
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