Monday 9th July - Thursday 12th July 2007
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research and publications project aims to create a forum for examining the links between living and dying, and some of the contradictions and paradoxes that arise in our attitudes to death.
Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are also warmly invited on any of the following indicative themes (or their combinations):
1. Kinds of Deaths: for instance, euthanasia, abortion, suicide, homicide, neonatal and infant death, accidents, natural disasters, sudden death, terminal illness/death, capital punishment, acts of terrorism; death of a child, parent, spouse.
2. Philosophical, Ethical and Religious Issues in Dying and Death
; the nature of dying and death (e.g. does an aborted foetus
die?); philosophies of dying and death; grounds for justifying
and/or condoning death (e.g., suicide, euthanasia); the
difference between seeking death and facing death bravely. When
is living to be feared more than death - or vice versa? Facing,
or even choosing, death in order to kill others. Concepts of
afterlife and their influence on the dying, theologies of death,
near death experiences; faith and secularism in death rituals;
the role of hope, expiation and forgiveness.
3. Bereavement; Grief, loss and anger; 'models' and
theories of grief and their adequacy with respect to different
kinds of deaths; can grief be shared? Grief counselling and grief
therapy; forms of remembrance, sites of remembrance, what do they
reveal and what might they conceal?
4. The Representation of Dying and Death - art, all forms of
literature, cinema, music, radio and television; death and dying
in children's literature; children's concepts of
mortality, violence and death.
5. Contradictions and Paradoxes: examples may include sudden death Vs our ability or desire to postpone death; horror at genocide Vs our appetite for films about ending lives in violent ways; respect for horror and grief Vs the tendency to wallow in their mediatised forms; terrorism Vs warfare; being informed Vs being de-sensitised by the media.
6. Technology, Dying and Death; the impact of advances in medical technology; social expectations of medical possibilities; the double-edged sword - technology as helper Vs technology as killer (e.g., lethal injection, vaginal aspiration, gas chambers).
7. The Management of Dying and Death. Hospitals and the limits of responsibility, e.g. (the imposition of) intensive care and aggressive treatment for dying patients; unacknowledged euthanasia; ageing and dying; care homes or waiting rooms for death; the hospice movement; limits to the humanising of death; whose decisions?
8. Legal Issues in Dying and Death; legal definitions of death, court rulings and decisions, the right to die, natural death and brain death statutes, advance directives and living wills; organ donation, organ transplantation; who 'owns' the corpse?
Papers are solicited for special sessions which will be held in common with a second research project running at the same time entitled Making Sense Of: Health, Illness and Disease. When submitting your abstract, please specify clearly whether you would like your paper to be considered for a joint session presentation. Papers submitted for joint sessions must be explicitly inter-/multi-disciplinary in nature and/or show where the possibilities for inter-disciplinary research and engagement could be developed.
Papers will be considered on any related theme.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Monday 26th March
2007.
If selected for presentation, 8 page draft conference papers
should be submitted by Friday 8th June 2007.
Abstracts should be submitted to the Joint Organising
Chairs;
Organising Committee
Mira Crouch
School of Sociology
The University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia
E-Mail: m.crouch@unsw.edu.au
Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Freeland
Oxfordshire United Kingdom
E-Mail: dd5@inter-disciplinary.net
Asa Kasher
Laura Schwarz-Kipp Professor of Professional
Ethics and Philosophy of
Practice and Professor of Philosophy
Tel-Aviv University, Israel
E-Mail: asakasher@hotmail.com
Abstracts should be submitted by email in Word, WordPerfect, PDF or RTF formats; alternatively the abstract may be placed in the body of the email.
All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be published in an ISBN eBook.
Selected papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be published in a themed hard copy volume.
The conference is sponsored by Inter-Disciplinary.Net as part of the 'Probing the Boundaries' programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.