Call for Papers
8th Global Conference
Saturday 12th November – Monday 14th November 2011
Prague, Czech Republic
This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference explores dying and death and the ways culture impacts care for the dying, the overall experience of dying, and ways the dead are remembered. Over the past three decades, scholarship in thanatology has increased dramatically. This particular conference seeks a broad array of perspectives that explore, analyze, and/or interpret the myriad interrelations and interactions that exist between death and culture. Culture not only presents and portrays ideas about “a good death” and norms that seek to achieve it, culture also operates as both a vehicle and medium through which meaning about death is communicated and understood. Sadly, too, culture sometimes facilitates death through violence.
Submissions might be imagined in any (or none) of the following ways: “death” as an expression of doctrinal beliefs and/or core values, death and dying as an on-going movement between an individual or community and a larger socio-cultural matrix, or death as essentially a cultural construction. Investigations that engage cultural studies from a variety of perspective are certainly encouraged. We also welcome perspectives that interrogate the stability of meaning(s) assigned to such terms (“culture,” “death,” “dignity,” “care,” etc.) and their complex inter-relations.
Specifically, submissions should be framed with at least one of the following four rubrics in mind: death/dying within culture, culture within death/dying, death/dying as popular culture (and vice versa), or death/dying in tension with culture.
We welcome submissions that produce conversations engaging historical, ethnographic, normative, literary, anthropological, philosophical, artistic, political or other terms that elaborate a relationship between death and culture. For example, submissions might investigate death and dying in relation to any of the following realms of culture:
- music
- literature
- film
- broadcast media
- religious broadcasting
- journalism
- athletics
- comic books
- novels / poetry / short story
- television
- radio
- print media
- internet / technology
- popular art / architecture
- sacred vs. profane space
- advertising
- consumerism
- new religious movements/religious subcultures
Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 17th June 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 23rd September 2011.
300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: Dying and Death Abstract Submission
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
Nate Hinerman
Nursing/Theology and Religious Studies
University of San Francisco
San Francisco, USA
E-mail: Nate Hinerman
Rob Fisher
Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
E-Mail: Rob Fisher
The conference is part of the Making Sense Of: series of research projects, which in turn belong to the Probing the Boundaries programmes of Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.
Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.
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