[ecrea] Call for Papers: The representation of death in modern society

*/Funes. Journal of Narratives and Social Sciences/*
Directors: Stefano Bory, Gianfranco Pecchinenda (University Federico II, 
Naples, Italy)
http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/funes/announcement/view/81

*Call for Papers: The representation of death in modern society*
The experience of death represents one of those few things every society 
must face, no matter what historical period. It has been defined as the 
most marginal situation, as it sits at the borders of every symbolic 
system, of every structure of significance that a community can possess, 
since it is not concretely knowable.
Therefore, every group as well as every individual who must face the end 
of human life, the loss and the elaboration of grief, also must question 
himself about the sense and the meanings of death to be able to face 
such big event.
Every epoch has its own generally consolidated ways to deal with the 
weight of death, through symbols, prevailing ideas and individual and 
collective more or less spread strategies. Analysing this symbolic and 
experiential repertory, the ways in which death is represented and 
perceived, even resistance and innovative ways, means to decipher 
different aspects of whole societies.
Death and its representations highlight, under the surface, different 
social issues connected, from religious phenomena to the stratification 
that dominant meanings can sustain, from social conflicts to the 
characteristics of everyday life, etc.
Therefore, it is possible to assert that death must be considered as one 
of those fundamental indicators to study the collective behaviour and as 
one of the central themes to analyse the imagery of an epoch, since from 
the transformations of the way to represent death it is possible to 
identify many cultural changes.
Technologies – most of all media – have had a relevant impact on the 
sense that everyone attributes to death and to its experience. If, 
according to many scholars, death in modern society has been 
characterised by a firm connection with privatization and 
individualisation, typical connotations of modernity, to the extent that 
we can talk about the segregation of the dying and the removal of the 
phenomenon from the public sphere and the rational analysis, it can be 
said that the development of technologies, especially media, has made 
death a public event, accessible and visible to all, producing new ways 
of representation, rituality, commemoration and narration.
We speak about death, but consequently we also speak about its 
inescapable corollary: the idea of immortality that in our times finds 
its most common expression in the cult of youth, in the valorisation of 
the body, in the idea of health and in the dominant aesthetic models. 
That is to say, phenomena revailing the fear of the old age, the fear of 
illnesses and of the end disclosed by the inescapable process of 
biological degeneration of the body and of physical pain. Starting from 
these issues, the articles, that can have a theoretical profile or 
present the results of empirical investigations, will have to reflect on 
the different ways through which the theme of death is represented, 
narrated and avoided, or on the experience and the meanings that are 
elaborated.
The proposals could concern the following themes, not exclusively, 
considering differrent approaches:

  * Death and modernity
  * Narrative practices and death experience
  * Media, technologies and death
  * Visibility and segregation, public death and private death
  * Meanings, symbols, ideas about death and dying
  * The body of the dying person
  * Strategies of immortality
  * Rituality, elaboration of grief and commemoration


Editors:
Luca Bifulco, Antonio Cavicchia Scalamonti, Gianfranco Pecchinenda, 
Alessandra Santoro

Submission
The abstract (max 500 words) can be written in Italian or in English and 
sent at the email addresses:
(info /at/ atelierfunes.com) <mailto:(info /at/ atelierfunes.com)>
(alessandrasantoro984 /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(alessandrasantoro984 /at/ gmail.com)>
(luca.bifulco /at/ unina.it) <mailto:(luca.bifulco /at/ unina.it)>
The e-mail has to contain:
Name, Surname, Institue of provenience and academic position of the author;
Provisional title of the article;
Indication in the email Subject line: “Call: The representation of death 
in modern society”

Times:
Abstract deadline: 30 November 2017
Results announced: 15 December 2017
Paper deadline: 20 March 2018
Referees’ decision: 30 April 2018
Final papers: 5 June 2018
Publication: July 2018
Accepted languages
English or Italian


http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/funes/announcement/view/81
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