5th Global Conference
Making Sense Of: Dying and Death

Monday 9th July - Thursday 12th July 2007
Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Papers
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_at_unsw.edu.au

Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Freeland
Oxfordshire United Kingdom
E-Mail: dd5_at_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_at_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.

For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/mso/dd/dd.htm

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/mso/dd/dd5/cfp.html

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Received on Thu Feb 01 2007 - 18:58:58 EST