SHCY Newsletter #4 (Summer 2004)

NEWS FROM THE FIELD

Janet Golden and David Pomfret, Editors

Call for Papers: Two Conferences

3rd Global Conference: Making Sense of: Dying and Death, Vienna Austria
Thursday 2nd December - Saturday 4th December 2004

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 which arise that we appear to accept without question. For 2004, special preference will be given to papers dealing with issues surrounding the death of the unborn (e.g., stillbirth, miscarriage, pre-natal death, death in utero) and death by violence (to self as well as others). These issues ñ and the links between them - have so far been largely neglected in interdisciplinary conferences and publications. Yet it is only in such settings that the arbitrary curtailment of human life can be fully explored in all its forms and implications. The Steering Committee wish to encourage a forum which offers the possibility of bringing to the fore much of the full significance of these matters for the human condition today. 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; aging 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 will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 3rd September 2004. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Organising Committee: Mira Crouch (School of Sociology, The University of New South Wales); Rob Fisher (Inter-Disciplinary.Net); and Asa Kasher (Laura Schwarz-Kipp Professor of Professional Ethics and Philosophy of Practice and Professor of Philosophy,Tel-Aviv University, Israel). 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. Please send submissions to: Dr Rob Fisher rf@inter-disciplinary.net If accepted for presentation, 8 page draft conference papers should be submitted by Friday 19th November 2004.

A themed hard copy volume has been published from the first meeting of this project; an ISBN eBook has been published and a hard copy themed volumed is in preparation from the second conference. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference will be published in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be published in a hard copy themed volume(s).

For further information 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/dd3/dd3cfp.htm

Infantuation: Childhood, Youth, and Nineteenth-Century Culture, 26Th Annual Conference of the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, Augusta, Georgia and Aiken, South Carolina – March 10-12, 2005 The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2004. For more information see http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=138516

During the nineteenth century, you couldn’t turn a corner – or a page – without some broom-wielding urchin, be-ribboned cherub, or herd of baby buggies getting in your way. How much of this was due to an actual change in population and how much of it was the result of a shift in cultural focus? The NCSA invites proposals for papers addressing ways in which the nineteenth century developed, interpreted, or invented infancy, childhood, adolescence, and youth both as ontological categories and as phases in human and national development. The conference will be held in Augusta, Georgia (at the historic Partridge Inn) and Aiken, South Carolina. Augusta’s airport has frequent connections to Atlanta.

The NCSA was founded to promote interdisciplinarity. We encourage proposal submitters to consider ways in which the attention to childhood and youth re-shaped fields such as medicine, art, nature, music, literature, politics, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and architecture. Possible topics include:

toys, clothing, and other artifacts
growing pains – evolving life
childhood, race, and ethnicity
boyish masculinity and politics, imperialism, and careers
women’s “babification” (as Mary Elizabeth Braddon called it)
concern for children, censorship, and new publishing criteria
babes in the woods: children, nature, and animals
youth-centeredness and developments in aesthetics, artistic genres, architecture
the place of maternity in the suffragette movement
fantasy, imagination, and the young
the changing practice of medicine and the development of Public Health initiatives
childhood and emerging disciplines such as anthropology and sexology childhood as a middle- and upper-class phenomenon, unfamiliar to the working classes and poor
the Pre-Raphaelites’ children – where are they?
the impact of labour needs and industrialization on the boundaries of age categories
youth, crime, and criminality
age, demographics, and sciences of the city and built environment
eternal youth and the rise of consumerism
ageism and the role of the elderly in society and the family
female Impressionists and the cult of the baby

Proposals should consist of a one-page, single-spaced abstract (12 point font), with the title of the paper and author as heading; the paper must be able to be presented within 20 minutes. Proposals should be accompanied by a one-to-two page vita. Send materials to Program Director Ann Ross. E-mail submission to (or ) is preferred; for “snail” mail, address to as listed below. The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2004. Further information about registration and accommodations will be available in the Fall from Local Arrangements Director Suzanne Ozment, who may be contacted at the Office of Academic Affairs, University of South Carolina, Aiken, SC

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