Mapping the Perimeter of Death and Dying

Description

Insomuch that death is both universal as well as subject to varied registers of meaning, death as a field of research occupies a necessarily inter-disciplinary position. This volume gathers multiple perspectives on death and dying composed by a selection of papers that were presented at the 9th Global Conference on Making Sense of: Dying and Death, held in Salzburg, Austria in November, 2012. Countering notions of death as mere negation, these chapters map out regions of sense-making along the perimeters of life. It approaches death and dying from an array of scholarly, theoretical, and practical disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, theology, political science, media studies, education, art studies, anthropology, sociology, and health care. Mapping the Perimeter of Death and Dying Table of Contents Introduction Part I Historical and Philosophical Contexts Religion, Metaphysics, Reality and The Problem of Death in Modern Literature and Philosophy Controlling Death: Philosophical Thanatology Meets Cultural Expectations Exquisite Corpses: The Depreciation of Female Death in Artistic Representation Corporate Culture, Policy and Caring in American Hospices: A Viewpoint Part II Both Sides of the Border Defining Death: The Challenge Posed by Near-Death Experiences The Roles of Social Actors in Accounts of Near-Death Experiences: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of France and the United States Virtual Immortality: Death, the Digital Screen and Facebook Part III Death in Media Death and Human Dignity in the Cinema of Liliana Cavani Vampires and the Failure of the Nordic Welfare State Graveyards on Paper: The Visual Form of Death Notices in the Estonian Press, 1865-2012 Part IV When Death is Assisted Montana’s Courting of Physician Aid in Dying: McCarter’s Trumpet On Futility and a Supposed Right to Kill from Benevolent Motives: Compassion and Justice at the End of Life Part V Mourning and Ritual Burial Lamenting in a 21st Century Vepsian Village: The Collective and the Individual In Memory of Children Who Die before Being Known: A Ritual Field in a Formative Phase The End: Before and after the Metaphor in the Contemporary Romanian Mass Media Shared Collective Emotions? The Funeral of Robert Enke as a Public Event