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"Birth and Death" (18-20 November 2010, Annual Conference of the German Association for the Study of British Culture, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum)
| Location: | Germany |
| Call for Papers Date: | 2010-06-01 (Archive) |
| Date Submitted: |
2010-05-05 |
| Announcement ID: |
176007 |
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The conference aims at taking stock of the current paradoxical discourses of birth and death in Britain: medialisation and medicalisation (both engendering a ‘new visibility’) as well as (de)rationalisation and choice. We are looking for papers dealing with an aspect of either birth or of death in British culture (no special rewards for trying to cover both).
Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:
• the historical dimension of contemporary discourses of birth and death: why do ‘natural birth practices’ and swaddling return? Which good old days are evoked when discussing 'natural' death (from the priest at the bedside, to the room full of family members)?
• the new visibility of birth and death in movies, novels, plays, on TV and in newspapers: what role do the many guidebooks, TV programmes and celebrity pregnancies play in the construction of birth? Which role do celebrity deaths (for instance, of Princess Diana or Big Brother star Jade Goody) play for the perception and construction of death?
• which normative discourses are employed to make sense of death (“smoking kills”) and to control birth (when is a life “worth living”?)? Which cultural practices undermine these norms?
• what are the counter-movements to such developments? What role do hospices for humane deaths, home births and radical midwives play in British culture?
• what cultural strategies exist that try to contain or assimilate the traumatic shocks of birth and death, from ghosts and zombies to jokes and media clichés?
• is there a particularly British way of turning birth and death into medical-pathological, technical, and discursive practices?
• which underlying ideologies and myths are discernible? In how far are gender, ethnic and class asymmetries inscribed in birth and death? what are the economics behind modern birth and death? Who profits, who foots the bill?
• do contemporary changes in constructions of birth and death indicate a shift in the overall “structures of feeling” and mental patterns?
• are there new theoretical approaches in cultural studies which are particularly suited to come to grips with the phenomena of birth and death?
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Anette Pankratz/Claus-Ulrich Viol
Englisches Seminar
Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum
Universitaetsstrasse 150
D-44801 Bochum
Germany
Email: anette.pankratz@rub.de
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