2011 - 8th Global Conference: Making Sense of: Dying and Death

8th Global Conference
Making Sense of: Dying and Death

Saturday 12th November - Monday 14th November 2011
Prague, Czech Republic

Call for Papers
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: nphinerman-AT-usfca.edu

Rob Fisher
Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
E-Mail: dd8-AT-inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Making Sense Of:
series of research projects, which in turn belongs
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.

For further details about the project please visit
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boun...

For further details about the conference please visit
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boun...